This weekend, I wrote yet another article, Linux Mail Server Software- A Comparison of Popular Mail Transfer Agents. I wrote this article, since many of my clients often ask me what the best Mail Transfer Agent, or MTA would fit their needs best. Although the article brings up some good points, it doesn’t get into a great amount of detail (as articles rarely do) about the different features of the many available MTAs. Here are some additional points:
- Qmail’s license is not an open source license, but instead is licensed under the public domain. As such, it does not come with a copyright license, which may restrict the ability to distribute Qmail.
- Postfix is easier to extend, with support for Sendmail’s milters. For instance, enabling DKIM support for Postfix is trivial.
- Although Postfix is faster at sending large volumes of email than Exim (“out of the box” configuration), You can easily improve Exim server performance.
- I’m still trying to figure out why Sendmail is still used on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and why it is still the most popular MTA)- Sendmail is definitely going the way of the dinosaurs- with it’s cryptic configuration, and security nightmares.
- Zimbra, while not a fair comparison against the others, excels in group collaboration. I’ve never had a client disappointed with it’s feature set, or performance. While not the best solution for a high volume mail server, Zimbra is very good at making email easier to use, and more powerful (without that dreaded Exchange).
I’ll stop short of recommending a “one size fits all” solution- in the end, it all matters on YOUR needs, not the software itself. There is no true winners or losers- just different solutions. As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about which solution meets your needs better.
Here is the article:
http://linuxconsultant.info/tutorials/linux-mail-server-software.html
