The Mailtraq News Services

The news service is a complete solution for using the huge wealth of knowledge that is the USENET. Mailtraq can download messages from specified networks, and then provide these to local users. Mailtraq can support practically any news client (supporting standard NNTP and all the common extensions).

Mailtraq can collect news from your service provider at high speeds by using multiple simultaneous connections, making latency delays a thing of the past. This ensures that your available bandwidth is used as efficiently as possible.

Mailtraq can also download news groups from multiple news servers.


News Gateways
Not everyone wishes (or is able) to use a news client to read news, so Mailtraq can deliver news articles to users via mail if they wish (filtering out unwanted articles). In addition, users can post news articles via email instead of using a news client. This could be the ideal way to keep an eye on news groups for relevant articles.

The news gateway can also be used to convert a mailing list into a local news group. If you are a member of a discussion mailing list, then you will know how similar it appears to a news group -- so why not make it one! Articles will appear in a news group, and when you reply to them the message will be sent back to the mailing list.


Mailing Lists
Mailing Lists Mailing lists provide a perfect and cost-effective solution for a variety of tasks, from group collaboration to announcements to message distribution. Nothing more than a standard e-mail client is necessary.

Mailtraq provides very comprehensive mailing list facilities, equal to most dedicated expensive list processing software. The mailing list facilities support both open (anyone can post) and closed (only members can post) lists, ideal for discussion forums, announcement lists and work groups. Message pooling (where each message is delivered to only one subscriber) is also supported, ideal for handling facilities such as technical support groups.


Subscription By Mail
Mailing Lists can be automated to allows subscription by mail, and each subscriber can have their own properties. These control which messages they receive (or exclude), whether or not they wish to receive binary attachments, and options to receive summary digests in addition (or as an alternative) to ordinary mail.

Mailing List security is provided by user passwords, and new subscribers can be automatically confirmed to prevent malicious use. (A confirmation address is sent to the new address to which the user must reply.)

Subscribers can choose to hide their identity, in which case any reference to them will be removed from their messages. On the other hand, they can permit their name and details to appear in the public membership list, which can be retrieved by any subscriber.

Subscribers can also use other mail-commands to change and view their own properties.


Workload Spreading
Using the round-robin distribution method, each message can be delivered to only one subscriber. For example, a sales mailing list could spread initial sales enquiries evenly between sales team members.


Announcements
Use announcement mailing lists to send out new information to subscribers. Subscribers themselves can join and leave as they wish. This is a good way to keep customers interested in your products, and keep them informed of the latest news and other events.