Good Morning Community,I'm comparing solutions that can work as a mail server for an organization (previously had exchange server)so I would like to ask does anyone has a use-case of running FortiMail in server mode, and feed me back on his experience concerning the below points:Effectiveness of server mode, and does it provide a real dependable mail server solution for organization levelCons of the this solution, especially concerning user experience and administrator experienceApps (like outlook or others) that can be used on desktop and mobile devices to access this mail server, and support calendar and address book synchronization, and the user experience concerning those featuresAdministrator experience with LDAP authentication (if applicable)I would be glad to find a successful use-case using this solutionFortiMail

Explorer III

Question

Evaluation of the effectiveness of Fortimail in server mode

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
March 1, 2026
6 replies
434 views

Good Morning Community,

I'm comparing solutions that can work as a mail server for an organization (previously had exchange server)

so I would like to ask does anyone has a use-case of running FortiMail in server mode, and feed me back on his experience concerning the below points:

Effectiveness of server mode, and does it provide a real dependable mail server solution for organization level
Cons of the this solution, especially concerning user experience and administrator experience
Apps (like outlook or others) that can be used on desktop and mobile devices to access this mail server, and support calendar and address book synchronization, and the user experience concerning those features
Administrator experience with LDAP authentication (if applicable)

I would be glad to find a successful use-case using this solution

FortiMail

FortiMail

ByteHaven

Explorer III

Morning,

I’m currently trying FortiMail in server mode, and honestly, I don’t find it that different from using it in gateway mode. Management and configuration are basically the same.

The only thing I don’t like is the webmail, it’s very basic compared to Outlook. It has the essentials (contacts, calendar, etc.), but no one really uses it, mostly just to change their passwords. I’ve set it up so users can use Outlook (desktop and mobile) or Gmail (mobile), and that is okay-ish, a bit slow and a pain when searching for emails (on mobile).

The con is that it’s one platform doing everything (server + security).

LDAP works fine in server mode.

Like I said, I really don’t see much difference between server and gateway mode.

The biggest pain was migrating from our old servers, it was a bit tricky, and some users were a bit lost at first, but they got used to it after a few days.

Overall, it’s a reliable mail server, but the webmail experience is pretty basic and migrations need careful planning.

The40ITGuyAuthor

Explorer III

Hi CL1,
Thanks for your reply. I understand that you already implemented the solution, as you did some user migration, outlook configuration and LDAP integration.

How are you managing the synchronization of calendar and address book in outlook. I know that FortiMail uses CalDav and CardDav, but outlook doesn't natively support them, and it needs add-ons.

-How did you manage this challenge?

-How do you manage situations where you receive a malicious email that pass the security and you need to delete from all users? (in exchange, you run a powershell command, and the email is gone)

-Have you tried other authentication techniques like Radius or SAML?

I know I'm asking a lot of questions at once, but I really need to know this information from someone who has already applied the solution.

ByteHaven

Explorer III

Hello,

To clarify, my implementation was done mainly for testing and validation purposes.

- Malicious email removal:
I haven’t encountered a case where an email bypassed my policies. I know you can empty a user’s folder under the "Maintenance" section, but I’m not fully sure whether there’s an Exchange like global search and delete capability across multiple mailboxes. For something that specific, I would recommend opening a Fortinet support ticket for official confirmation.

RADIUS / SAML:
I haven’t tested them myself. However, RADIUS can be configured under : Profile > Authentication > RADIUS.
I’m not fully certain about SAML , as I haven’t validated (I also would recommend opening a ticket for this matter).

Calendar / Address Book:

We don’t really use Outlook’s built-in calendar or address book. Some users have manually uploaded a CSV file to populate their personal address book in Outlook. For calendars, we rely on an external tool to manage scheduling and events.

As I mentioned before, I’m still experimenting with FortiMail in Server Mode. I haven’t tested all features yet, nor have I tried using it to replace Exchange’s functionalities at full capacity.

The40ITGuyAuthor

Explorer III

I would be glad if more contributors - who have experience with operating FortiMail in server mode - share their experience, concerning the above discussion

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