From an administration perspective, MailEnable is comprised of the following components.

• Post offices
• Domains
• Mailboxes
• Lists
• Groups

Post offices

A post office is used to host multiple mailboxes and domains under one area. For example, to provide mail hosting for multiple companies, each company would have a post office. A post office can have multiple domains and mailboxes assigned to it.  A small mail server might only have one post office.  Post offices can have the same name as a domain. It is common for hosting companies to use a domain name as a post office name and to only have one domain within that post office with the same name.

Domains

Multiple domains can be assigned to a post office. At least one domain needs to be configured in order to have a valid email address.

Mailboxes

A mailbox is a repository for email. It is used to store emails for one or more email addresses. When a user connects with a mail client application (Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.), they connect to a mailbox to retrieve their email. When creating a mailbox, MailEnable will automatically create an email address for each domain in the post office, using the format mailboxname@domain. A mailbox can have multiple email addresses. This means a user only requires one mailbox to connect to, from which they can retrieve email from all their email addresses.

Email addresses

Each mailbox can have one or more email address mapped to it. It is only possible to add an email that matches an existing domain for the post office. When a mailbox is created, MailEnable will automatically create email addresses for each of the domains for the post office.

Lists

MailEnable contains a list server that enables people to subscribe and unsubscribe to a list. A list is an online discussion group or information mailout, where emails are sent out to all the members. People are able to post to the list (e.g. list@companyx.com), and the server will duplicate their email and send it out to all the members.

Groups

A group is an email address that maps to one or more other email addresses. For example, a group which has the recipient as staff@companyx.com can have 50 email addresses as members of this group. When someone emails staff@companyx.com, the email is duplicated and sent to all 50 members.