MinterSoft's VisualOffice offers a wide range of Web-based services in addition to e-mail—from a global address book to an online photo album.

by Jeff Goldman [September 16, 2004]

Mintersoft, the company behind VisualOffice, was founded in 1991. The company began focusing on Web-based e-mail applications in 1997, and expanded into Web-based collaboration solutions in 2001. Mintersoft now has offices in New York, Uruguay, Argentina, and Taiwan, and customers that range from Harvard University to Ford Motors.

According to Mintersoft account officer Daniel Fritzler, the company's offering works equally well for large and small ISPs, and Mintersoft happily works with service providers of all sizes. "We offer solutions for single servers, and also for installations with multiple servers on load-balanced and high-availability configurations," he says.

VisualOffice 1-888-MINTERCORP

VisualOffice can be run in conjunction with an ISP's own IMAP or POP3 server, or using the SMTP and POP3 servers that come with the application. About 60 percent of Mintersoft's customers, Fritzler says, already have their own mail server and are looking just for VisualOffice's Web-based tools; about 40 percent need both the mail server and the Web client.

The VisualOffice application includes a lot more than just Web-based e-mail. Depending on the level of service purchased, the offering can also include additional services ranging from a global address book to an online photo album. "And you don't have to install anything on your desktop," Fritzler says. "Everything is Web-based."

Additional services
The solution is available in three different versions: Standard, Professional, and Enterprise. The Standard version includes just the Web-based e-mail, the mail server, and the address book. Professional adds a calendar, tasks, notes, journal, and discussion boards, while Enterprise includes all the above plus instant messaging, file storage, and a photo album.

VisualOffice comes with a confirmation-based Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) spam filter, and can support any rule-based spam filtering software. It also comes with a free installation of ClamAV, and can be set up to work directly with a wide range of commercial anti-virus solutions.

The VisualOffice client can be integrated directly with a number of MTAs, including Qmail, Postfix, and Exim. "It works just like procmail, so if the SMTP server supports procmail, they will be able to run VisualOffice," Fritzler says.

Installing VisualOffice, Fritzler says, is a pretty straightforward process. "If you install the application available for download from our Web site, you can have your own mail server, with Web-based access and Web-based collaboration, within three minutes," he says.

All pricing for VisualOffice is listed on the company's Web site, and is based on the version selected as well as the number of users supported. For larger installations involving more than one server, a site license is available that supports both an unlimited number of servers and an unlimited number of users.

Version 5 of VisualOffice, Fritzler says, will be released by January of 2005. The new release will add a number of improvements, including mail encryption, an Outlook-style interface, a more advanced spam filter, and more powerful collaboration support. "It will also have an XML mail back-end—an XML mail native database for storing all information," he says.

Increased expectations
Allan Blevens is Vice President at Kenosha Information Technology, which runs the webmail service MailSnare. When the company first launched in 2002, Blevens says, it did so using Horde's IMP Webmail, not VisualOffice. "We actually still offer Horde, and a lot of people do like that interface," he says. "It's a great product."

Still, Blevens says, they were looking at other webmail solutions, and even toying with the idea of creating their own, from the beginning. As soon as he came across VisualOffice, he says, he was sold. "It just brought my expectations to another level," Blevens says. "It's really easy to use."

The application's functionality, he says, far exceeded that of IMP Webmail or any other application they were considering, particularly with regard to filters. "When you enter a filter through VisualOffice, it's real time—meaning that if you check it from your Outlook Express or use another e-mail client, that filter you entered in VisualOffice is going to work regardless of the interface it's coming through," Blevens says.

Mintersoft, Blevens says, worked with Kenosha Information Technology to make sure the product met their needs. "We had a custom infrastructure already built before we got the product in hand," he says. "We worked with their developers, and they helped us get everything running. Their support is pretty fantastic."

Most importantly, Blevens says that VisualOffice made the MailSnare offering approachable to a whole new spectrum of customers. "If you're a technical person, any interface would probably be fine, because you can get into it even if it's not intuitive—but VisualOffice opened the door for a lot of people that may not be as technically oriented," he says. "It's very intuitive."

Switching from Horde's open source solution to VisualOffice, Blevens adds, made his life much easier. "They've got a great team of developers, and we're really happy with how their technical support has continued throughout the time that we've been using it," he says. "There's a lot of work to running an e-mail business, and this really lets us just outsource the commercial product."

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