FAQ

mxHero is a server side platform. For you to have the benefits of mxHero for your email account you should contact your email administrator and request that he/she add mxHero to your email server. Depending on what email server you are using, adding mxHero can be a question of minutes. For example, domains that use Google Apps for Business can readily find mxHero at the Google Apps Marketplace.

mxHero is currently being used in production by Inova Tecnologias in Brazil. Inova is a corporate email hosting provider for over 150,000 accounts across 7000+ companies. Joining Inova are many other providers, enterprises and SMB across the globe. At Google Apps, mxHero is being used by more than 3,500 companies.

Commercial support, training and professional services are available for mxHero (see Support). Non-commercial support is available via community channels (forum and wiki).

Most companies have no control over how their email is used. This prompts disclaimer’s and other artifices that inadequately deal with inappropriate usage that can threaten the organization. mxHero helps you take control over your company’s email:

• Attachment block
  • Block dangerous our inappropriate attachments.
• Block list
  • Selectively establish policy, block inappropriateemail. Ex. group buying email alerts or other emails that may drain productivity from the company.
• Email size limiter
  • Economize on bandwidth by restricting the size of emails.
• Permitted recipients
  • Selectively restrict specific groups of users to sending to pre-defined recipients or domains.
• Restricted delivery
  • Protect specific email addresses to receiving from only pre-determined senders. Ex. company-wide address, everyone@company.com , limited to internal company users only, or just the CEO.
• Bcc policy
  • Prevent the usage of blind carbon copies (Bcc) in the company.

With spam, phishing and virus ever more common among emails, threat protection is a critical aspect of email usage. mxHero can help keep you safe:

• Antispam
  • Use the built in SpamAssassin antispam system or integrate your email’s existing solution (ex. Cloudmark, Ironport, Postini, etc.)
• Antivirus
  • Activate included Clam Antivirus protection.
• Attachment block
  • Block dangerous email attachments, ex: .exe, .bat and other suspect file extensions.

Join the club! Email overload is a common complaint. mxHero offers the following solution:

• Instant Alias
  • Don’t expose your real email address. Create disposable email aliases on-the-fly, quickly and easily.
• Antispam
  • Reduce junk email by activating antispam protection.
• Antivirus
  • Reduce threatening viruses and other problems by reducing email born viruses.
• Blocklist
  • Persistent email that you can not get rid of can be blocked either at the email address or domain level.
• Restricted Delivery
  • Limit who can send you email.

• Wiretap content
  • Silently copy emails based on key words and/or phrases.
• Wiretap sender/receiver
  • Silently copy emails based on origin and destination.
• Bcc Usage
  • Silently copy email sent as a blind carbon copy.

mxHero was designed to be extended through plugins and aims to be more of a platform than an application. We are currently working on getting:

• a plugin gallery in place;
• automated plugin installation GUI;
• complete plugin developer documentation.

So bear with us, we are working to get these things out! 

That said, we are generating new plugins at the moment and will be posting them as they come out of the oven.

Currently mxHero comes pre-loaded with all existing applications.

We are preparing documentation for the initial plugin API. This will evolve.

Developers will be able to post their plugins at the mxHero plugin gallery. Developers can determine if they want to charge or not for their contributions and bill directly.

mxHero has two deployment options: appliance and package.

Appliance

As an appliance mxHero simply “stands” between the Internet and your email server. In this configuration, mxHero is compatible with all email servers. See installation in the documentation for more details.

Package

As a package, mxHero is integrated with your email server. Currently only Postfix and systems that use Postfix like Zimbra are supported, however, the roadmap plans for MS Exchange and other email servers. The advantage of this method is that no adjustments are needed to DNS or email server configurations. See installation in the documentation for more details.

If you already use an email border system, such as, Ironport, Barracuda, etc., you can still include mxHero in the delivery chain. mxHero is able to recognize most solutions and integrate them into its reporting system. In this way you continue to leverage your prior investments while gaining new mxHero benefits.

mxHero scalability depends on the mix of plugins being used. Without plugins, mxHero can process over 1 million emails per day on an Intel I3 dual core with 2Gb of memory. In existing production environments with plugins, mxHero has so far processed around 100,000 emails per day on dual core hardware.

Flash is a mature technology with a very large footprint (iPad excluded). It is also easy to use and create nice looking graphic user interfaces (GUIs) – which is particularly important when you have gui-challenged developers like ourselves! 

That said, the front end interface of mxHero is merely a client of the java server backend. In other words, clients can be made of any conceivable technology capable of using web services. At the time we opted for Flash but considered HTML-5, which was still in its infancy.

A HTML-5 client is on the roadmap.

In the interim we will be releasing an Adobe AIR version which should be runnable on tablets and even smart phones (if you squint).

Our only real focus is getting the best user experience possible in the shortest amount of time – whatever technology that takes.