Back in MOSS era, Developers used to leverage Windows 2003's SMTP & POP3 for emails. When move to SharePoint 2010, the POP3 svc is not available on Windows 2008, we need to find another alternative. There are 2 free email server software that can be used: MailEnable and hMailServer. I believe there are more free stuff than these 2. Both of these provide robust features for SMTP & POP3 though MailEnable come with WebMail feature. hMailServer is lighter anyway. Here are the excerpt from its web sites
hMailServer is a free e-mail server for Microsoft Windows. It's used by Internet service providers, companies, governments, schools and enthusiasts in all parts of the world.
It supports the common e-mail protocols (IMAP, SMTP and POP3) and can easily be integrated with many existing web mail systems. It has flexible score-based spam protection and can attach to your virus scanner to scan all incoming and outgoing email
MailEnable's mail server software provides a powerful, scalable hosted messaging platform for Microsoft Windows. We offer stability, un- surpassed flexibility and an extensive feature set which allows you to provide cost-effective mail servicesThe following summarize steps to configure hMailServer to relay emails through Google mail servers
Step 1: Download and Install hMailServer from http://www.hmailserver.com/
Note: Set an admin password for the console, be sure not to loose this password as the admin panel will be access less frequent later on. I lost my password once in my SP Dev Farm.
Step 2: Open the Administration console for hMailServer, follow the screenshots
Step 3: Configure Email Client
Test Email result:
Hope this will save someone time!
