Our email platform, called Mercury Mail, is built in house from the very best available open source tools – to offer you the best email hosting experience at the lowest cost.
Fully featured reliable email services Email Hosting
Mail storage
Storage itself is handled via the ZFS file system allowing for the ability build out additional storage as and when demand requires. Additional storage can be added live without the need to suspend overall system services.
Every disk on the storage system is mirrored in the event of disk failure. This ‘JBOD’ approach to storage managed via two separate head nodes, deployed in an automated failover configuration in the event should a single controller fail.
Load balancing
All areas of the email platform are load balanced by the robust Haproxy system. Haproxy works twofold:
- To evenly balance the real time load across across available servers.
- To automatically detect and disable access to backend servers in the event one should fail.
We load balance every aspect of our setup, from the servers that process inbound mail connections through to caldav services and the Galera databases that store user account settings.
Open Source
We are keen supporters of open source at 34SP.com and use the best tools to deliver a world class email experience. In building our Mercury Email hosting platform we use the following pieces of software:
Postfix
Used to power incoming mail server connects. Postfix accepts email from the outside world.
Amavisd
One of a trio of anti spam tools. Amavisd runs simple tests against all inbound email, triggering further checks to Clamav (antivirus, see below).
Clamav
ClamAV is an open source antivirus engine designed for detecting trojans, viruses, malware and other malicious threats. It is the de facto standard for mail gateway scanning.
Roundcube
This software is used to power our webmail client for a fast and responsive browser based email experience. Roundcube is recognised as a thoroughly user friendly webmail client with a has a modern design. The system has user controllable themes, allowing for improved experiences via smartphones and tablets.
SpamAssassin
More checks are performed by this industry leading spam prevention software. SpamAssassin allows each user on the email platform to personally ‘train’ the spam systems sensitive there own mailboxes (bayesian filtering) and have user selectable sensitivity to spam.
Policyd 2 (cluebringer)
The final tool in our anti spam toolkit is the brains behind greylisting, a method of challenging mail servers before blanket accepting inbound email.