# Best choice for POP3/IMAP4?



## tomh009 (Nov 29, 2008)

I'm in the process of rebuilding our mail server, and I really want a more robust POP3/IMAP4 server -- have been using dkimap for some years (back then there were few choices), and its manageability and performance leave a lot to be desired.  

Am planning on continuing with sendmail for SMTP (have been running sendmail for close to 20 years, so complexity is not an issue) although I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.  Incoming spam and viruses are a non-issue as we use Postini for filtering.

But switching should be easy.  And I still need to support a mix of local mail (mutt and pine) and remote ones (POP3 and IMAP4).

So what's my best option?


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## DutchDaemon (Nov 29, 2008)

Glad to hear *someone* not moaning about Sendmail's complexity for a change  Once you know how it works (which is not that much of a learning curve), it's extremely flexible and extendable (currently running it with blacklists, greylisting, MailScanner, ClamAV, SpamAssassin and DKIM in one go). 

As for POP3/IMAP: I'm very happy with Dovecot, which I use for POP3/POP3s/IMAP/IMAPs.


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## tomh009 (Nov 29, 2008)

We used to run sendmail with greylisting, ClamAV and SpamAssasin as well -- but in the end switching to Postini gave us better spam shielding and less maintenance.  If I were running the server full time, though, the decision might have been different.

Anyway, once you've learned to do all the sendmail configuration with .cf files, .mc is a piece of cake.  

Thanks for the datapoint on dovecot!


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## aragon (Nov 29, 2008)

I'll second Dovecot.  Great imapd.


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## gilinko (Nov 29, 2008)

I'll "third" dovecot. Was a cyrus imapd user before, but since the switch to dovecot I have never been happier.


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## oversize (Dec 3, 2008)

I had no clue of mailservers before. So I dont know how complex sendmail is. 

But i was impressed how far i got, using postfix and dovecot for mailserving. And everything runs well so far. At least noone complains, yet 8) 

Both projects have very good documentation and once i understood the basics of mailserving and how the things work together i could easily configure those tools. 

But as i gain experience i might see that differntly


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## bsddaemon (Dec 3, 2008)

Sorry this is a bit OT. I know Opera supports IMAP and POP3, and probably I have to install a POP3 server, but Im wondering is there any kind of (dirty) hacks that enable Opera browser to read local, system emails, say mails delivered by cron?


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## CyberCr33p (Dec 3, 2008)

Dovecot is great. It uses not much RAM and has not many dependencies.


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## DutchDaemon (Dec 3, 2008)

bsddaemon said:
			
		

> Sorry this is a bit OT. I know Opera supports IMAP and POP3, and probably I have to install a POP3 server, but Im wondering is there any kind of (dirty) hacks that enable Opera browser to read local, system emails, say mails delivered by cron?



I know it's just one opinion, but you might want to take this in before you proceed: http://kontrawize.blogs.com/kontrawize/2007/03/opera_is_not_a_.html


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## bsddaemon (Dec 3, 2008)

The problem referred in the blog probably was in old version of Opera (the article was written in 2007). Im currently using Opera with Gmail IMAP and I dont experience that problem


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## stathis (Dec 8, 2008)

I'll go with Dovecot too. 

Though I've used sendmail too, but I'm a lazy type of guy, don't want to configure too much stuff, so went with dovecot.


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## r-c-e (Dec 12, 2008)

No one using Courier these days?


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## dave (Dec 13, 2008)

I use courier - it works ok.  But I am going to check out dovecot based on the response here.


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## dave (Dec 13, 2008)

Related thread: Best choice for webmail?


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