mailPrimer is an SMTP server that we've built from scratch and sell as an eMarketing service, however, when I say eMarketing - don't think newsletters and bulk email.  While mailPrimer is fully capable of managing your recipient database, sending bulk mail, managing bounces etc - our primary use is to send our customer's daily email.

This is how it works.  You change your exchange smarthost to relay all mail through your (or our) mailPrimer server.  Our mailPrimer SMTP server takes the email and breaks it down to bare-bones, then stores it in a SQL Server or My SQL database (or anything else because we use hibernate).  We then have another java service that polls the database, rebuilds the email and delivers it.

Because all of our customers want different things, we have built mailPrimer as a rules engine and everything it does to an email is controlled by rules.  Rules can be created for the server, account, sender, recipient, group of users etc and can be set to match the subject, body, headers, sender, recipient, recipient's email client etc.  We currently have 45 rules - doing everything from cleaning that disgusting word html - automatically embedding images, changing the sender's email domain, applying an html template, adding tracking etc and the rules are all database driven, so you can build your own rules by implementing a very simple API.

Rules are applied during pre- processing and post-processing, so it is fully flexible and very powerful.  mailPrimer is also designed to run on multiple servers - as long as they share a database.  Each server is capable of delivering about 300 emails per minute - which is fairly slow - but it is doing a heck of a lot more than most SMTP servers!

mailPrimer has a ton of features built in - such as address validation before accepting emails (to avoid those nasty misdirected bounces) and also keeps its own global database of goodies so that it can apply the sender's rules, but also consider the recipient's preferences and capabilities.

If you're interested in mailPrimer as a marketing solution - send an email to sales@mailprimer.com - but if you're looking for a solid, commercially built and tested SMTP server that will allow you to really look good in front of your technical and marketing directors, then email me - andrew.butel@calcium.co.nz.

We recently employed a guy from a large ISP in New Zealand, and the first thing he said was: "And well, 10 years of exp in the ISP industry, and I haven't seen ANYTHING that comes close to this. I am VERY impressed!"