Email Clients For Schools Advice Please?

[joshjacklin]

Hi,

Here at the moment in our school with all of the kids we use the thunderbird client, which is all well and good but we are looking for something a bit better, any suggestions please. The preference that it would be free but a costing solution wouldnt be out of the question.

[FN-GM]

What E-mail system do you have? Can you give a little background on it?

 

Also what OS? Windows i presume?

 

Thanks

[joshjacklin]

Well, more information sorry i was a bit vague, we have a windows 2003 server environment and all of the work stations are on xp, we do have a mail server at the moment which uses debian, but thats all i know about it, at the moment we use thunderbird but my boss is reluctant to use outlook on the childrens workstations.

[kmount]

What functionality are you lacking which is making you look for change?

[FN-GM]

Erm ok, I would have thought Webmail would have been a better way to go down in your case.

[joshjacklin]

well its more that my boss has asked me to look as we want to organise contacts lists like one big list that everyone pulls contacts from but one for the kids and one for the staff, I know that may be something entirely different of which but I was asked to investigate clients, then I asked more and that was the answer I recieved.

[webman]

I would look in to migrating your current system to Zimbra - it's an enterprise level open-source email and collaboration suite. It has a fantastic web-based interface with global/shared address lists as well as many other great features. Accessed through a desktop front-end such as Mozilla Prism, you can even make it look and feel like a separate application to your end users.

[Stuart_C]

We use MDaemon here. It's a full Mail aServer but has a nice web interface for the pupils and staff to use with a familiar look.... No need of outlookand it works on any client machine without any configuration as it's all web bassed. Those staff with offices who do use Outlook make use of the Outlook connector to access the shared folders/contact list.

 

Price isn't too bad. Especially when you ring them and tell them you are a school and get the education pricing.

 

Exchange has a web access component but then you need to install Exchange to get it.

[garethedmondson]

We are an Exchange school so use OWA. The reason we use this instead of Outlook is that it provides a consistent interface for pupils accessing their mail from outside.

 

Gareth

[stariq]

our staff and students use OWA

 

never had a 'user' issue with them

 

STariq

[u8dmtm]

I sugest considering Google Apps Education Edition or Microsoft Live@Edu, both are free for schools, both come with SLAs and Live@Edu comes with Outlook Web Access (Outlook Live) and Exchange Live. I can't see how any school can justify the cost and overheads of running an on-site Exchange or similar server when this is now available.

[mbird]

We use exchange, as we use OWA and Calendars.

But if its e-mails your using, then the free webmail option would probably be best.

[robbie-w]

Microsoft Live@edu or Googles alternative

 

Have the email out on the cloud free