Email server recommendation

[Steve Bertrand]

Richard McNeilly wrote:
> I am trying to plan a ISP deployment using FreeBSD.  I am more familiar
> with Linux but during my research, it's been pointed out that FreeBSD is
> the more stable and reliable choice for an ISP.  Especially as an email
> server.
> 
> What is the best way to manage the addition of new users to the email
> server?  local users or is there a database solution.  Also is there a
> software package available to easily administer email accounts or does
> it all have to be done with custom scripts.
> 
> I would welcome any suggestions of anecdotes of experience.

We use a few of these:

http://mail-toaster.org/

...with two clustered Barracuda 400's in front of them. We have all
filtering turned off on the mail servers themselves.

However, if you are just starting out, you could use the filtering on
the servers, and then upgrade to a different solution as revenue increases.

With a couple days worth of code writing, we have a single interface
that allows us to do pretty much anything.

Support:

- one click user password retrieving/changing
- RADIUS user management
- managing any/all domains and/or user(s)
- one click to enter any user webmail (to delete large messages for
those on dial-up)

Administration:

- adding domains/users
- one click user management/domain management
- client level domain management access (web)

We have ~10,000 email accounts, and we process very close to 1 million
emails per day. We started out using Unix accounts and mailboxes, but
that quickly got too cumbersome to manage across an ever increasing
number of domains and aliases. With this setup, the front line support
staff can pretty much do anything regarding our users/domains safely,
that I would have to do myself before.

OT, I would also recommend djbdns with VegaDNS frontend. This
combination is extremely easy to get up and running, especially after
done once. It is an exceptionally fast server, and with the web
front-end, makes it a cake-walk to manage domains. This too has client
level domain DNS management (per-domain, group or user delegation).

Regards,

Steve