Hi,

I'm strongly considering moving our shared hosting servers away from sendmail - sendmail lumps all email together in 1 file (mbox format) - so when a customer accesses his pop/imap account with 100mb of email, the server has to open a 100mb file. This causes unneeded stress on the server and performance issues to the end user.

That being said, I'm now considering alternate MTAs which use maildir format - the 2 options that I know about are qmail and exim.

From what I see, CPANEL and DIRECT ADMIN both use exim. I've heard that qmail is fast, efficient and secure.

My question is, what is the difference between the 2 (performance, flexibility etc..?)

Thanks

If you're using CP or DA, you're going to have to stick with exim. The MTA can't be changed, as that's how they do a lot of their work.
Plesk uses QMail, as far as I know thats the only one, tho there may be others out there.

As far as differences:
With exim, you've got everything in one centralized file. With Qmail you've got everything in one centralized directory. If you do a lot of editing and tweaking of configs, then you're best off with exim.

QMail is much better than sendmail, though I'd have to say that comparing it with Exim, it lacks severely on the new user side (ie: newbies trying to edit this or that).

I HAVE had issues in the past with qmail and their web based frontends, occasionally the passwords just stopped working, or the accounts just stopped being recognized. The only way I found to solve that problem was to reinstall it. This was a few years back, though, so they might have fixed whatever bug that was.

Thanks for your reply!!

We run our own control panel, so switching the mail software is possible.


Can you please elaborate on what you meant when you wrote: "...though I'd have to say that comparing it with Exim, it lacks severely on the new user side (ie: newbies trying to edit this or that)."

I will throw in Postfix. It's pretty easy on the server, simple to configure, and supports virtual e-mail natively.

Exim puts everything into /etc/exim.conf
QMail puts everything into /var/qmail, and in many cases splits things up so that you can't see where the main configuration is.

Qmail requires patching for RBL's, Spamassassin and the like. While you CAN do this, you will certainly have a harder time doing it than with exim.

Exim, on the other hand requires no patching for RBLS, mailman (they have a howto on their website, quite easy to use), SpamAssassin or the like. All you have to do is edit the configuration file as you want and you're set.

Now, on the reverse side:
There are various different projects (140 on freshmeat total) for QMail, as compared to a few (40 on freshmeat total) for exim. Qmail can be setup and integrated with quite a few applications which will allow control of your domains easily enough (ie: creating users via the web, email addresses, etc) . I've yet to find something like that for exim, tho I'm sure it exists somewhere.

Postfix and qmail have better track records in security. Postfix has a lot of functionality built-in, while qmail's design is very modular, allowing you to add features by replacing parts of it (see qpsmtpd, qmail-scanner, and vpopmail for examples). I don't know much about Exim -- from my limited experience with it, it seems to be written as a more secure and easier-to-use replacement for Sendmail. It has a lot of functionality built-in, too. Whichever one you choose, Maildir is definitely the way to go.

I'll throw in my two cents regarding qmail: initial installation can be a pain in the neck if you are new to how qmail works. But there are several good tutorials including www.lifewithqmail.org -- once you know how things work, future installations are pretty straight forward.

And yes, if you want "enhanced" functionality such as spam/virus scanning then you will need to patch the original qmail version -- but you can also download an already patched copy. Remember than qmail 1.03, which is still the current version, came out in 1998 (at least I have been using it since 2000). SpamAssassin wasn't even born yet. But the good news is that qmail has a proven track records, at least a good enough one that we are still using the same base version, although with a few patches here and there (aSMTP, spamassassin, ...). I personally did not have a need to fix anything during the time I'm using it, on numerous servers. Once installed, it "just works".

One more note: qmail handles the Maildir format natively (but you already knew that). I good POP3/IMAP (and SSL) server is Courier IMAP. Small and fast, tons of features, even notifies client of new mail rather than have the client poll the mailbox. But maybe other do that too now.

Just to let you guys know, I chose qmail

It took a whole day of tinkering, but I got the base qmail with vpop and imap working - running on mysql database info - I must say - I'm VERY happy - it is alot of tinkering, but after that, it is awesome - very fast too.

If I can successfully get SpamAssassin, antivirus and autoresponders to work today, there is no reason why I wouldn't use it on our production servers.

exim is sooooooo sweet tho. In my humble opinion, that is the BEST program out there. Period. I wish the same people would write an ldap server (... as openldap is one of my least fav's)

Maybe that means i'm a newbie and need something that's ezez2config4noobeez.

Originally posted by telnettro
exim is sooooooo sweet tho. In my humble opinion, that is the BEST program out there. Period. I wish the same people would write an ldap server (... as openldap is one of my least fav's)

Maybe that means i'm a newbie and need something that's ezez2config4noobeez.

I find Exim's config to be a confusing mess, I have yet to get SMTP-AUTH to happen before RBL checks so that users with dynamic IPs listed in RBLs can get passed using SMTP-AUTH, or even with them already listed in the relayhosts file.

Qmail on the other hand I've been running for about 6 years without issues, I've upgraded it to new patches for virus and spam scanning along the way and it ticks along beautifully.

Exim I have to deal with on our CPanel boxes and it is one of the main reasons we're not going to add any more CPanel boxes to our offerings, I'm leaning more towards any panel using Qmail since I can tweak that system easily, it has no problem allowing SMTP-AUTH and/or relayhosts before RBL checks are done, etc.

I have never seen Qmail lose a message yet, Exim on the other hand will happily throw away messages if something messes up along the way or the config has been misconfigured.

I dunno, I do see some things about Exim that are nice but it's just not the email system I'd choose for a server.