Rainmail Intranet Server

Pre-Sales FAQ

1. Why do you license the product on an annual basis and not sell it outright?
2. I have a web space provider and an ISP account. I ask all my employees to use a free mail account like the ones provided in www.yahoo.com or www.123india.com. How will switching to your solution help?
3. I have a web space provider and an ISP account. I use a third party software which lets me have multiple mail boxes with just a single connection. How will switching to your solution help?
4. I have a Novell Netware/Windows NT network. Can "Rainmail Server" co-exist in this environment?
5. I have branches in different locations and want an easy and transparent messaging solution between these locations. Will "Rainmail Intranet Server" support this?
6. How secure is "Rainmail Intranet Server"?
7. Can I use "Rainmail Intranet Server" with my current ISP?
8. I am convinced. What do I do now?

Why do you license the product on an annual basis and not sell it outright?

Rainmail Intranet Server was written with the goal of giving you all the advantages of a direct connection to Internet with just a dial up connection. To this effect, we need to give you at least the ability to

• Host your web pages on Internet
• Create as many email addresses as you want locally and maintain them
• Access Internet whenever you want to (just type in the name of the URL)

While some of these features can be provided with just client software, others (like hosting the web pages and providing local control of email addresses) require us to host your domain. This domain we are talking about could be your own domain name or it could be one of our domain names (like getcloser.net). We are in essence providing you services that your web hosting firm could provide, but does not.

This means that our costs are recurring (much like an ISP) and we have to sell our service on an annual license basis.

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I have a web space provider and an ISP account. I ask all my employees to use a free mail account like the ones provided in www.yahoo.com or www.123india.com. How will switching to your solution help?

There are many advantages with our solution. We will list them. After going through those, you will be able to judge for yourself whether switching to our solution will help. To sumarize, our solution is more flexible, faster, economical, and secure than your current scenario.

1. Using free email accounts means that you have to permit your employees to access the Internet. In "Rainmail Intranet Server", you have the flexibility of just allowing email access to employees while blocking Internet access.
2. Sending/Receiving email through these accounts is typically much slower than it needs to be. Suppose your employee wants to send email through Yahoo!

• She will have to type in the URL for accessing mail.
• That presents a login page where she enters the login name and password.
• She is presented with a generic page.
• She chooses "Compose".
• A new page comes up where she can type in the message. Really smart employees might have typed in the text already and will use cut and paste to place text in the message box.
• Employee presses "Send".
• The above process is repeated for each mail.

This means that depending on your modem speed, it could take anywhere from  2-3 minutes to send a single mail. With "Rainmail Intranet Server" solution, you open up your favorite email client, type in the message and press "Send". You do not need to be connected to Internet and since everything happens locally, the sending process is very fast. The same scenario applies to receiving emails. With "Rainmail Intarnet Server", you open up your favorite email client and emails are downloaded at click of a button. Again, there is no need to be connected to Internet.

3. "Rainmail Intranet Server" bunches all emails and sends and receives emails  in one go periodically. This reduces your Internet connection charges, uses up your phone line much less and sends emails faster. Some of the reasons why this might affect your bottomline are:

• Your Internet charges are based on usage (e.g., in India you pay Rs. 17 per hour to your ISP).
• Your telephone charges are based on usage (e.g., in India you pay Rs. 20 per hour to your phone company).
• Your cannot afford to tie up your telephone line. With "Rainmail Intranet Server", you can control when you will connect to Internet for sending/receiving emails. The phone line can be used for other purposes when the server is not connected.

Even though you might be paying less to your web space provider, you will be paying much more than with "Rainmail Intranet Server" solution to your ISP.

4. The free email accounts are not secure. When you enter your password to access these email accounts, they are encoded (not encrypted) and the encoding algorithm is public. These passwords can easily be intercepted and used to read your emails. "Rainmail Intranet Server" always encrypts your passwords before sending it on the Internet. Therefore, you can be sure that no one but you can read your email.

This link explains a security problem found in a popular free email account.

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I have a web space provider and an ISP account. I use a third party software which lets me have multiple mail boxes with just a single connection. How will switching to your solution help?

1. There are systems that advertise that you can have multiple email addresses with just a single ISP connection. All of them have one or more of the following shortcomings

• The system does not actually create valid email addresses. They create email addresses like "name <email@domain.com>". You will only have the flexibility to create multiple accounts using the "name" field. For example, you might be able to create two email addresses, "krishnan <pop@icsoft-us.com>" and "jaya <email@icsoft-us.com>":

The problem with this scheme is that the sender has to be aware that you use this mechanism. If the sender is aware of this scheme, he can reach the correct person by sending email in the correct format. If the sender is not aware and sends an email using the normal method, it will either get lost or misdirected.

• The system creates valid email addresses, but looks at the header of the mail to find out who should receive this mail.

SMTP (mail) protocol does not require the address of the sender to be present anywhere in the header of the mail. This means that mails that are supposed to reach you either get lost or misdirected. The following simple check on your current system should convince you that you are losing mails.

• Suppose the domain name you get emails in is "domain.com". Make sure you have created at least two users in your system. Let us assume that the users are "krishnan" and "jaya".
• From somewhere outside your system (say using your Yahoo! account), send an email to krishnan@domain.com and jaya@domain.com such that "krishnan@domain.com" is in the "To:" field and "jaya@domain.com" is in the "Bcc:" field.
• Check email from your system.
• You will find that user "jaya" has not received her email.

Another check you can try is subscribing to some mailing list using one of the email addresses created by this system. You will be surprised to find that you do not receive all the postings from the list.
 The lost emails might mean that you did not get a potential customer or that one of your existing customer's query was not answered resulting in loss of a repeat order. "Rainmail Intranet Server" however, allows you to create valid Internet email addresses and uses technology to guarantee that you receive all the emails sent to you.

2. "Rainmail Intranet Server" is a complete Intranet solution and provides much more that messaging (like file storage, internet access and web sites). It also provides a firewall, seamless integration with Internet and scans your mails for viruses.

3. To access mail, any system sends the password to the mail server over the Internet. Systems available currently in the market send the password in plain text. "Rainmail Intranet Server" always encrypts passwords when sending them across the Internet. This ensures that only you can access your mails.

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  I have a Novell Netware/Windows NT network. Can "Rainmail Server" co-exist in this environment?

        Yes. In this situation computers in your LAN can make use of facilities offered by your Netware/NT servers as well as "Rainmail Intranet Server".

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I have branches in different locations and want an easy and transparent messaging solution between these locations. Will "Rainmail Intranet Server" support this?

        Yes. The email domain feature of "Rainmail Server" is designed to do exactly this. In this case, each branch location will get an email domain. Mails addressed to the branches will automagically land up in the mail box corresponding to that branch.

        Suppose you are using the domain name "icsoft-us.com" to receive all your emails. You have branches in four locations Chennai, Chicago, Casablanca and Calcutta. It is very simple to have transparent messaging between these locations. An example installation follows:

• Install "Rainmail Intranet Server" in a computer in each of these locations (You can consider purchasing the Site pack to save on cost).
• Set up email domain of the branches to be name of city.
• That's it!
• Now, users in Chennai will get email addresses of the form "user.chennai@icsoft-us.com" and other cities will get addresses of the form "user.cityname@icsoft-us.com".
• All the technical details will be handled by "Rainmail Intranet Server".

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How secure is "Rainmail Intranet Server"?

        It is very secure. We even use it in our site :-). Seriously, "Rainmail Intranet Server" was designed with security as one of the most important considerations.

        Within your LAN, no one can access "Rainmail Intranet Server" or its data without a password. You can use unusual passwords (making it hard to crack) and change it often to secure your installation.

        When connected to Internet, "Rainmail Intranet Server" does the following to secure against attackes from Internet:

• "Rainmail Intranet Server" comes with a firewall that makes it impossible for outside users to access your client machines.
• Your computer gets assigned an IP address whenever it gets connected to Internet. An attacker can try and get access to your resources using this IP address. Fearing this, we have disabled access to all services in your server from the Internet. This makes having access to your IP address useless.
• Whenever you access mail using a POP mail box, you need to send your account name and password to the mail server on the Internet. All contemporary mail clients send the password in clear text or use simple encoding mechanism. Therefore it is possible for any person in Internet to intercept your password and use it to access your mails. "Rainmail Intranet Server" uses a sophisticated challenge-response strong encryption mechanism which makes it impossible for a snooper to get your mail box password. Your mails will be secure and will remain readable only by you.

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Can I use "Rainmail Intranet Server" with my current Web Space Provider?

        No. We are talking to different Web Hosting Companies about modifying their mail servers to support our technology and it might be possible to do it in future. As of now, you will have to transfer your domain to our servers if you want to deploy "Rainmail Intranet Server" in your sites.

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I am convinced. What do I do now?

If you want to use a domain name owned by Carizen (say "getcloser.net") for receiving/sending emails, your decision process is simplified. Follow these steps and you will be on your way to building a world class Intranet.

• Each site where you want to install "Rainmail Intranet Server" needs to have an email domain name. Say you choose an email domain name of icsoft, users you create on the "Rainmail Intranet Server" will have email addresses of the form <username>.icsoft@getcloser.net (e.g., krishnan.icsoft@getcloser.net).
• You might want to choose an email domain name that is reflective of your company/branch/location. Have alternative ones ready in case your first choice is not available.
• If you plan to install in more than four sites, consider buying a site pack.
• Follow these order instructions.

If you want to use your own domain name (say "ics.com") for sending/receiving emails, you have some additional decisions to make. Follow these steps.

• Register the domain name with InterNIC, if not already done.
• Prepare any administrative work required to transfer the domain to our server.
• Determine if you want email domain support. You will need this if you plan to deploy "Rainmail Intranet Server" in multiple locations.
• If you need email domain support, choose email domain names for each of the locations you want to deploy.
• If you plan to deploy in more than four sites, consider buying a site pack.
• Follow these order instructions.

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