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Sending out email is an usually task when developing web application, so, you should have the ability to test your send mail function. hMailServer is a free e-mail server for Microsoft Windows. It supports all the common e-mail protocols (IMAP, SMTP and POP3) and comes with an easy-to-use COM library that can be used for integration with other software. It also has support for virtual domains, distribution lists, antivirus, antispam, aliases, distributed domains and much more. E-mail data is stored in a database server, MySQL or MS SQL, depending on your choice.

1. Now we start, install hMailServer on your Windows

Setup hMailServer step 1: On the welcome page, click Next Setup hMailServer step 2: Change the location for your installation, then click Next Setup hMailServer step 3: Leave it as is, click Next (or you can change it if you understand what you do) Setup hMailServer step 4: Use built-in MySQL database server (same as above, only change it if you understand what you do), then click Next Setup hMailServer step 5: Click Next Setup hMailServer step 6: Click Install Setup hMailServer step 7: OK, now just wait setup do its task, copy needed files and register its component Setup hMailServer step 8: Enter your administrator password (and remember it), or simply put 'admin', this is a local setup for testing purpose, so I think it no problem Setup hMailServer step 9: Leave the check there, click Finish

2. Configuring our hosts file

OK, we're done with the hMailServer installation, now we needs to modify a little bit in our hosts file to help lookup our domain for email. Setup hMailServer, configure hosts file step 1: Open 'Run...' dialog, enter %windir%\system32\drivers\etc then Enter, your explorer will open the folder contains a file named hosts Setup hMailServer, configure hosts file step 2: Open the 'hosts' file in your favorite text editor, I'm use EditPlus, you can just use notepad, it's ok. Just add localhost.local beside localhost as above screen. You can change this for your own domain, but ONLY when you understand what you do.

3. Add domain, add account for your mail server

After you're done the above steps, the rest is very easy. After step 1, setup wizard will end after open a little windows Configure hMailserver step 1: Leave it as is, click Connect Configure hMailserver step 2: Enter your administrator password which we set in the installation process, or 'admin' if you don't change it Configure hMailserver step 3: After connect, the above screen will appears, change to Status page, notice the status is Running Configure hMailserver step 4: Back to Welcome page, now, we can add new domain for our mail server, just click 'Add domain...' Configure hMailserver step 5: Enter as above screen, please note, the domain name is the one we added in 'hosts' file. Click Save when done. Configure hMailserver step 6: Now you can create account for your domain, just click 'Add account...' Configure hMailserver step 7: The Add account page will open, enter your desired account name, password, and quota then click 'Save'. Configure hMailserver step 8: Your just created account will appears in the left tree panel. Hey, you know, we just done our last step. Our hMailServer already up and run, we have new domain, we have email account, to add another, just redo some step above, that's all.

Congratulation!!

Now you can setting up mail server for your Windows development environment, create domain for it, add user and send/receive e-mail with MS Outlook.