mail server recommendations?

[Arie Kachler]

Hi Michael,

I've researched mail systems myself for quite some time now. We 
currently use Sendmail + a custom pop3 server. We don't use system 
accounts. Sendmail is showing its age, mostly in the way it scales. It's 
difficult to integrate with any database backend. LDAP is your only 
solid option, but I'm no fan of LDAP.
We are about to migrate from Sendmail and have considered Qmail and 
Postfix. Qmail is great. The only reason we did not choose it is because 
most features are patches of different authors and the quality and 
documentation of the patches varies. It makes us a little nervous to 
patch so much.
So we've decided on Postfix+mysql+courier-imap. Postfix seems to have 
everything we're looking for: security, speed, sql backend, no system 
accounts, and quotas. We're still testing it, but it seems to behave 
very well under heavy loads.
Regarding virus and spam filtering, we are doing it on Sendmail boxes 
now, which simply forward to other servers for pickup via pop. That will 
not change when we migrate since milter works well and there is no need 
for a sql backend on these boxes.
We never looked at Exim. Some people like it. We just never got around 
to it so I can't give you any information on it.

Hope the info helps.

Arie Kachler




>Hi folks,
>
>I've already tried Google, and found a lot of discussions that are
>either a) old, or b) don't quite match our requirements.  So:
>
>I'm looking for a decent solution for a mail server software package.
>We need SASL, IMAP, pop3ssl, antivirus, and mime-type filtering.  In
>an ideal world, we'd have the ability to create mail accounts without
>creating user accounts.
>
>I have to admit that I'm partial to sendmail simply for the milter
>interface that lets me plug in, say, MIMEDefang, clamav, and all sorts
>of other nifty stuff.
>
>What are people using these days?  What sucks the least?  Any opinions
>from folks who have been there welcome.
>
>Thanks,
>==ml
>
>-- 
>Michael Lucas		mwlucas at FreeBSD.org, mwlucas at BlackHelicopters.org
>
>Today's chance of throwing it all away to start a goat farm: 49.1%
>		http://www.BlackHelicopters.org/~mwlucas/ <http://www.BlackHelicopters.org/%7Emwlucas/>
>