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Recommendations for the Right IMAP Server?

Posted by Cliff on from the finding-the-one-for-you dept.

eugene ts wong asks: "Our company is planning on taking care of its own email, by setting up our own server. I've been given the task of researching what is out there. So far, I've got my heart set on an IMAP server that we can install on Gentoo. Unfortunately, email isn't our forte, and I really have no idea of where to start. I've made some google searches, browsed around on the IMAP site, and also found this email. According to the mutt documentation, Cyrus and Courier are the best choices." What IMAP servers have you used, and which ones would you recommend?

"I'm still at a loss for what to do. The documentation of all but uw-imap seem to be a bit complex for me. If it helps, I'd like to point out that I have Mutt and nbsmtp installed, which work fine for connecting to our SMTP and POP servers. How do I know what will serve our needs the best? Also, is there an IMAP server that I could install easily for testing and learning purposes? I'd like to be able to get something installed without much configuration. Security shouldn't be an issue for testing purposes, because it will only be on the local network, and the computer will be turned off when I'm not actively testing it. We're also willing to purchase products as well. We're willing to hire a professional to do it for us, but the boss wanted some research done so that we know what we're getting. Any comments are welcome. Thanks in advance."

6 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Gentoo + Mail Servers by abartlett_219 · · Score: 5, Informative
    It looks as if Gentoo recommends the Courier-IMAP server, but an emerge search IMAP returns cyrus, courier, and uw-imap (plus a patched version of uw-imap for virtual domains).

    Gentoo has a HOWTO using various packages here.

  2. 1-800-Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why not try Microsoft? From everything I read here, they are well respected and only put out top-notch, high quality products.

  3. Cyrus IMAP for sure.. by T-Ranger · · Score: 5, Informative
    But first, do you realy want to use gentoo in a production machine? It may be fun to recompile everything, but for a production server, especially with something as important as email, gentoo isnt even a contender.

    Anyway.. Cyrus IMAP seems to be the best of breed IMAP server. Its desigined to work in a 'black box' enviroment, where the users dont need 'real' accounts on the machine - and if they did would have to use IMAP to access their mail anyway.

    Its ACL features might be of significant use for a work enviroment (Im planning on deplying it in an ISP enviroment, so its not much help to me). Its heavy reliance on SASL is a bit tricky to get working, but recent IETF decisions seem to mean that SASL is a necessity for just about anything.

    http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/cyrus-overview-TOC.ht ml

  4. Don't by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't do it. Outsource it to a datacenter. There's absolutely zero reason for you to do this yourself. The correct answer is to pay a service provider a small fee to take care of the servers, the backups, the security, the maintenance, and all of that bullshit for you.

    Don't.

  5. Other factors to consider by ChaseTec · · Score: 5, Informative
    What other properties are you looking for in your email server? For my domains(osdev.org and variants) here's the combination I use:
    • Courier IMAP - Supports Maildir, works well with most IMAP webmail setups, easy to setup, support Secure IMAP
    • Postfix for SMTP - Can offload mail delivery to another program like Procmail, replaces Sendmail
    • Procmail for Delivery - The Great thing about IMAP is that you have message folders on the server, procmail will allow you to sort incoming mail as it arrives.
    • Spamassassin - Integrates with Procmail to sort spam into a folder or /dev/null
    • SquirrelMail - Seems to be one of the best web based IMAP clients around, done in PHP
    The reasons I picked the above: Free, Wanted IMAP for server-side folders, needed Maildir support because I didn't want to use mbox because of performance and locking issues, and I needed webmail and an IMAP server known to work well with webmail.

    --
    My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
  6. Want flashy? Gentoo. Want reliability? OpenBSD. by Telent · · Score: 5, Informative
    For that volume, if you want "set it and forget it reliability"...

    OpenBSD, hardened Sendmail from the default install, and Dovecot. Can't beat it. It just keeps going and going and going... </energizer-bunny>

    One good thing, too, about OpenBSD is that it's very, very light on your hardware. I did mail for more users than you're talking about on a P166. Make sure to use SMTP auth with Sendmail, though. And, yeah, I do consulting too. Send me an email if you're interested and we can talk.