hMailServer can be installed in the following operating systems. The latest available Windows service pack must be installed. hMailServer has only been tested on the following operating systems. hMailServer may work on other operating system versions as well, but only the versions below are officially and regulary tested.
hMailServer 5.3.x & Earlier
Windows NT support has been removed since Microsoft no longer supports this operating system.
hMailServer was designed to provide, in one single download, everything you need to run an email server. hMailServer has its own integrated database server, a light-weight version of the MSSQL database server. Should you not wish to use it, you can select one of the following database engines:
Notice that hMailServer is only tested with production releases of database engines. If you install an alpha or beta of for example MySQL, you should not expect hMailServer to work with it.
If you plan to use the hMailServer password changer plugin or auto-reply plug-in with SquirrelMail, you will need SquirrelMail 1.4.7 or later.
If you plan to use PHPWebAdmin to manage your hMailServer installation via a web browser, you need to run a web server where support for PHP is available.
hMailServer is incompatible with the following sotware:
For hMailServer to work properly, automatic virus scanning of the hMailServer Data directory must be disabled. You should configure your virus scanner to exclude the hMailServer Data directory from scanning. If you do this, it is recommended that you configure hMailServer to launch your virus scanner whenever a new e-mail is received.
The hardware requirements are very much dependent on the number of users. They also depend on whether or not you will be using IMAP support, virus scanning, filters, etc. POP3 uses much less CPU resources than IMAP, so, if you have a lot of users, POP3 is recommended. hMailServer normally uses less than 100MB of memory. The largest hMailServer installations have over 20 000 user accounts hosted on a single server.
The administration program for hMailServer, hMailServer Administrator, requires a screen resolution of 800x600 or above.
To be able to successfully set up an email server, you need to know the basics about certain techniques related to Internet and email. While some parts of the hMailServer documentation describes and discusses these things, the hMailServer documentation should not be seen as a reference documentation for these areas. You need to have a basic understanding of the following items to be able to successfully set up an email server on Windows.
As well as knowledge on networks, and email systems you should also have knowledge on SQL database management (of your choice) if choosing an external database.