# Sendmail vs. Postfix vs. ? - Comparison Requested

## grapesmc

I have been using sendmail for the most part for a while. I just recently built a Gentoo box to replace my Fedora Core 3 system. So far loving the speed and forced Linux relationship that Gentoo provides. However, sendmail didn't quite work "out of the box" as it did on the Red Hat side of things. Being familiar with all it's config files, I am sure I can get it running, however - I see here that the majority of folks are writing how-tos that focus on Postfix as a mailer. I am not sure of the benefits, etc. Has anyone seen a good write up (yes I searched) comparing the two? I usually do the whole sendmaill/dovecot/spam assassin/squirellmail thing, and saw a nice write up on doing something similar except changing it to include apache, courier-imap, courier-authlib postfix, mod_php, phpmyadmin, squirrelmail, cyrus-sasl, mysql, php, and mailman. 

Who's got words for Postfix vs. Sendmail? And sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but it was a request for a document.... 

Thanks!

Rob

EDIT:  DT&T isn't for requesting documents.  --pjp

----------

## adaptr

You might want to try this in Networking & Security, since D, T & T is really for contributed documentation, i.e. in case you actually have any  :Wink: 

The $MTA1 vs. $MTA2 debate is, of course, both prolonged and ultimately pointless - you use what you know and like.

I have used sendmail without knowing how to configure it - Red Hat does that extremely well.

Then Postfix for about a year, and I must say I can actually understand what the configuration says  :Wink: 

Have been on Exim for the past 2 years, and it is simply a breeze...

The default configuration needs maybe 5 changes to its global config to get a real Internet domain running out of the box - no MTA I have ever seen can match that.

What it will come down to, basically, is these points:

- the extent to which the MTA itself is adaptable to your needs, i.e. do you need custom filters and such, and does the MTA provide you with the capabilities to achieve this?

- ease of use and configurability; both Postfix and Exim easily win out over sendmail in this respect.

- security & filtering (both spam and virus): sendmail has long been known for its dubious record here, and I must say that I would not even attempt it in this day and age.

- speed (if you need that): Postfix wins over most every other MTA here; according to its designers it can process up to a milliion mails a day on a single CPU machine - this means roughly 10~12 per second, with probable peaks of up to 50 per second.

- stability: no clue - I haven't seen any MTA die on me yet...

For sheer user-tweakability, I'd say give Postfix a try - you can get it to do nearly anything you can think of.

That said, both Postfix and Exim in combination with Spamassassin, apache, php and squirrelmail have run happily on my P-166 box.

Not fast, mind you - but more than adequate.

----------

## mattt416

 *grapesmc wrote:*   

> I have been using sendmail for the most part for a while. I just recently built a Gentoo box to replace my Fedora Core 3 system. So far loving the speed and forced Linux relationship that Gentoo provides. However, sendmail didn't quite work "out of the box" as it did on the Red Hat side of things. Being familiar with all it's config files, I am sure I can get it running, however - I see here that the majority of folks are writing how-tos that focus on Postfix as a mailer. I am not sure of the benefits, etc. Has anyone seen a good write up (yes I searched) comparing the two? I usually do the whole sendmaill/dovecot/spam assassin/squirellmail thing, and saw a nice write up on doing something similar except changing it to include apache, courier-imap, courier-authlib postfix, mod_php, phpmyadmin, squirrelmail, cyrus-sasl, mysql, php, and mailman. 
> 
> Who's got words for Postfix vs. Sendmail? And sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but it was a request for a document.... 
> 
> Thanks!
> ...

 

hey rob,

i use sendmail on my rhel machine, but only because it was installed by default and i didn't want to muck around too much when all i use mail for is one single domain.  for me, the major difference between sendmail and postfix is that postfix has the ability to handle virtual domains much better than sendmail.  sendmail can deal with them fine, but it uses the system password file, as opposed to a virtual user system where you can have users tied directly to domains.  the postfix configuration is supposed to be a lot easier to understand, but i don't have too much problems with the sendmail.mc file and rebuilding the sendmail.cf when need be.  try them both out and see which you prefer.   :Smile: 

on a side note, i've just installed qmail and vpopmail on my gentoo server, but this is strictly for testing purposes.  have you tried qmail at all?

-matt

----------

## robbyjo

How about security? Which one is the most secure?

How about ease of configuration (for one domain)?

How about ease of configuration for multiple domain?

Thanks  :Very Happy: 

----------

## grapesmc

First off, sorry for posting this here. If someone wants to move it to a better home (like the above mentioned Network & Security) that would be super. Didn't mean to look so yellow. Basically this is exactly the dialog that I wanted to get started - since I can only really lay claim to knowing/working with/supporting Sendmail in large installations I am just looking to listen to others experences with Postfix, and sure, any other major MTA. As far as QMail goes, I played with it a bit a while ago, when my buddy who runs E-Vite was evaulating mailers (and they push a lot of mail). I think they went with Q, but I'll double-check before I put that in stone, and that it was able to seriously crank through the massive Queues that they generate... with ease.

I am going to go forward with my PostFix setup, and do my best to document some of the basic differences for building a fairly robust system with Postfix and the usual suspects vs. Sendmail with the same (or close to the same).

I also need to start timing my compiles. I swear now that I am compiling everything on Gentoo I spend a lot of time just zoning out, looking at the screen - before I realize that I need to go do something else since watching never speeds it up. And this is on a 2.4GHz P4.

Rob

-- update --

my friend actually confirms that Qmail was dropped for a super-modded version of sendmail

----------

## bedo

I'm seriously considering building a mail server that can handle 100's of 1000's emails a day with a lot of tweaks; such as inspecting the email, changing the content including header (to and from) and store it in PostgreSQL preferably (or mysql) database.

my question is which one is better for speed and and tweaking Qmail or Postfix. Which one has more modules, or better API to handle SSL, Authentication, ...etc.

Thanks

----------

