I'll second Stan's comments.  Free support is frequently as good as the
paid support.  For common software, like sendmail or BIND, I'll start with
a search on Google.  Often, that turns up the exact problem I'm having
within 10 minutes.

If the MTA is for the exclusive use of Listserv, another possibility to
consider is LSoft's LSMTP.  I am not using LSMTP, but I have contacted
LSoft support several times about Listserv Classic. They were mostly
newbie questions, but I was pleased with the experience.

---

Spam isn't speech, just like a note wrapped around
a brick thrown through a window isn't publication.

William Brown
Email/Internet Services
Erie 1 BOCES




Stan Horwitz <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: LISTSERV give-and-take forum <[log in to unmask]>
10/21/2003 09:36 PM
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Re: [LSTSRV-L] Mail Transfer Agents






Other than Microcrap Exchange, Sendmail is the only MTA I know of that has
paid tech support. Keep in mind that the free tech support from the good
people who monitor the comp.mail.sendmail Usenet newsgroup is superb. I do
not see the rationale for paying for tech support. In fact, I once posted
a question to the sendmail newsgroup at 2:00am and received a response
within half an hour during a crisis that hit the nail right on the head
and fixed the problem I was having.

Also, do not assume that paid tech support is superior in any way to free
tech support. I have had many ocassions where I posted a question on a
particular software package to a free forum such as this one and gotten a
perfectly fine response in a reasonable period of time.

Just recently, I went three months waiting for a correct response from
paid tech support for a particular software package. This is tech support
that costs my employer several tens of thousands of dollars annually.
After I got tired of waiting for a response that actually worked, and I
had done some detective work on my own, I posted a question about the
problem at hand to a free tech support forum. In half an hour, I had the
answer I needed while the paid guys took another two weeks to come to the
same conclusion, and they had the benefit of several gigabytes worth of
log file and debug analysis. This issue did not involve Listserv software,
by the way. Do not assume that paid tech support is superior to free tech
support, esp. for products that provide Internet service.