# Making the Qmail/Postfix choice

## ZippyJay

I operate a single domain email server using Sendmail and Pop3 for about 150 users.  I am building a replacement server and am thinking about moving away from Sendmail.  I am also looking to do authentication (and possibly SSL Secured connection) on the SMTP side and possibly switching to IMAP mailbox end of things.  I am also looking to add some sort of web access for email (and that is a whole other ball of wax).

It seems that the 2 other big players in the MTA arena are qmail and postfix.  

I am looking to get as much information as possible about both of these programs.  

It seems that qmail has been around longer than postfix, has a large following, and has reputation of being secure.  

On the other hand, postfix users seem to hold it in high regards, and there seems to be some advantages to using postfix too.

Considering I will have to learn a new system either way, I am open to either.  It seems that I am leaning toward qmail, but would like to know the advantages one way or the other.   I realize that there are probably many great reasons for using either one of these programs.

What are your Preferences?  

Any specific reasons?

If qmail seems to be the replacement for sendmail, then what is it that postfix has to offer that makes is also popular?

Does anyone have any links to reference articles that discuss these topics?

Thanks for your input.  I appreciate all opinions. 

ZippyJay

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## msalerno

If you search these forums, you will find many many many of the same posts with many long threads.

I have worked with both qmail and postfix.

Never had a problem with either.

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## rsevero

Hi,

This is certainly a flammable topic but let me share my experiences.

I used qmail for a long time. I decided to dump it when I got a new contract which emphasizes the need for an unexistent feature in qmail:

Suppose you have one message to several users and that many of these users are on the same domain. The SMTP protocol permits you to transmit this message once to the destination host and ask it to deliver the message to all the users on that domain. It saves time and bandwidth. And sadly the regular qmail won't do it. Nor won't as far as DJB cares. In this situation, qmail will retransmit the message several to the same destination server, once for each destinee. As far as I can remember DJB thinks this is a "too rare situation to care about".

It isn't rare to me right now. Even if it were rare, it's a waste of bandwidth.

There might be patches for qmail including this feature but as far as I remember DJB was quite emphatic on the difficulties someone would encounter including this feature in qmail because of it's internal structure. So I'm not sure.

I considered PostFix when I decided to dump qmail but then I figured out that I would want IMAP support (PostFix's IMAP solution is in fact CourierIMAP). Then I decided that I would like webmail support (Courier has a webmail solution bundled inside). I was more familiarized with maildrop than with procmail (maildrop is Courier special deliver tool). At this point I decided to try Courier itself and not get something else and attach several Courier pieces to it.

I'm happy with Courier ever since.

Recently I decided to take a new look at this issue. Looked for some MTA comparisons. I was surprised to find a few pages mentioning security issues in PostFix. I can't recall where I saw it nor what exactly were they talking about but Google is your friend.

Courier isn't mainstream at all. It's difficult to even find a MTA comparison that mentions it but this might change... Anyway if you are interested, take a look at www.courier-mta.org. I can state that Courier is feature packed (but anyway, which MTA isn't these days?), performs really well as is rock solid.

My 2 cents...

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## ZippyJay

Thanks for the info about Courier.  I am thinking of using IMAP, so I will definitively check it out.

It seems that from what I have read, qmail is not necessarily supported anymore by it's author, or at least there hasn't been an updated version for for quite a few years.  The way  the qmail community has dealt with this has been through patches, but apparently there  are quite a few patches that need to be loaded to bring the program up to speed (whether all of these patches are needed seems to be debated).  The other thing that seemed catch my eye was that qmail seems to be structured and operate very differently than Sendmail and Postfix.  Not to say that is is bad, just different.  Also, qmail seems to have some licensing issues that make future development an issue.  This is not to say that qmail is not a good program.  There are lots of people who seems to love it.  It also has a history of great security.

Postfix seems to be a more backwards compatible with Sendmail.  This is not necessarily a big issue for me, but it seems that Postfix has a true free software license and is fairly well regarded also. 

This info seems to lean me toward Postfix.  We'll see.  Any correction or input to the above info is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

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## jhunholz

I'm a run Postfix on three different mail servers and really think it is a great MTA. Probably the thing that drew me to it was it's ease of configuration. I tried setting up Sendmail once and it was a nightmare! But Postfix configs are VERY easy to read and understand. I currently use it with Courier IMAP, but I've also used it with UW-IMAP and a few other IMAP implementations and had no issues with it at all. It is definately easy to configure, easy to maintaine, and can do a lot of stuff that even Sendmail can't do. I would highly recommend it.

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## ZippyJay

In case anyone cares, I did finally choose Postfix a while back and have been very happy with it.  Seems very straight forward to work with and if you know anything about Sendmail, you will find the transition is rather painless (well, at least for my simple setup it was).  I recommend picking up a postfix book if you are a noob to Postfix.  The book of Postfix by Ralf Hildebrandt and Patrick Koetter from No Starch Press proved to be very useful.  

Thanks again for all the info!

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