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Huppie
Asked: 2009-05-01 05:15:48 +0800 CST

What kind of mail server do you use?

  • 772

There are a lot of mail servers out there. Microsoft Exchange has been the dominant corporate mail server in the enterprise on Windows, but I've been using Kerio Mailserver for a long time now and am still wondering if there aren't any better solutions.

Which mail-server do you use, and why?
What feature make a specific mail-server 'stand out'?

Both *NIX and Windows applications are welcome.

email email-server

30 Answers

    • 20

  2. Ubuntu 8.04 server + Postfix + Dovecot. IMAP clients. Reason is KISS. Easy to set up and care+feeding is minimal. Modest hardware requirements.

    • 8

  3. Exim + Exchange.

    Exchange is a pretty good groupware client, and advantage No.1[*] is Activesync (email + calendar sync) which frees us from relying on Blackberry :)

    Having said that, I wouldn't make an exchange server directly internet facing as the bulk of mail received by a normal corporate MTA is invalid (spam etc) and the cost per message of running an efficient exchange server is much higher that a solid *nix based MTA.

    Exim is (IMHO, and as mentioned) the most flexible, stable and resource efficient way of handling large or small volumes of email - you can have spam/virus filtering with a few additional apps and any rules based flexibility required using the exim filter system. I have never come across a mail requirement that couldn't be handled by exim (and I've had some strange requirements) and the documentation and mailing list support is great.

    My usual setup is Internet -> Exim -> internal Exchange server with a bit of NAT for active sync and outlook web access. Scalable, secure & easy to manage.

    [*] for me. I think other people like it for other reasons... :)

    • 8

  4. We use Zimbra. It's much cheaper than Exchange, uses open source technologies, the Desktop client works on Windows, Linux and Non-PPC Mac's.

    The server portion is also a very easy install on a Debian box, but runs on Windows as well.

    • 6

  5. I'm currently using hMailServer to host email for 5 different domains.

    http://www.hmailserver.com/

    I'm using SquirrelMail to provide webmail to those domains.

    http://squirrelmail.org/

    This is running on a Windows 2003 R2 box with IIS6 to serve the webmail. The main reasons I'm running this combination is because both programs are free, and don't need calendaring at this time. These are also relatively painless for somebody that has only done Windows.

    • 5

  6. My company uses Exchange for collaboration, but I made them use Exim for the gateways. Exim is the most flexible mail server I've ever seen and is a joy to use and I couldn't imagine trying to do some of the things I'm asked to do with only Exchange (domain filtering based on regexp, normalizing domains so that our users in exchange only have one domain and our 20 public domains still work, handling the fact that at the moment a given lp@domain can exist in three different platforms (legacy-linux, Lotus, and Exchange), etc)

    • 4

  7. I'm using the free version (up to 10 users) of SmarterMail. Pretty full-featured w/ built-in ClamAV and SpamAssasin. It also has calendaring, web-mail, groups, etc.

    • 3

  8. We're primarily a Windows shop, but like the OP, we use Kerio Mailserver instead of Exchange for our internal groupware needs.

    Our websites send out a ton of email. All this email and even email from our corporate Kerio server are sent via a mailhub running Postfix.

    • 2

  9. Exim throughout. Why?

    • Happily backs off to our RDMS of choice.
    • Configuration files make easy reading.
    • Log files are easily read and parsed.
    • Documentation is concise.
    • Scales well.
    • Simple to bolt in non-standard delivery options without being hackish.

    I've had to use sendmail and qmail heavily in the past. And still today, occasionally. Both of which prove only to cause me immense pain whenever our paths cross.

    • 2

  10. Groupwise. It takes only one sysadmin (me) to support mailboxes for 7000 people. Server-side I think is great. Client-side is... getting better.

    • 2