I have a client that would like to have 500 mail boxes in the start and hopes to grow to 5000.
Currently I am a bulk reseller of one of the resellers hosting companies.
My question is: will I be able to server 500 mail boxes on my actual reseller box or is it to much?
How many email boxes would you think I can put on one server?
For how many boxes should I switch to dedicated server? And what will be the ideal config for such email server.
How much traffic should I take in account for a 500 email boxes server? How much should I charge him for 500 email boxes and how much for 1000-5000?
Thanks in advance

the amount of accounts per server depends on the hardware specs, os, os configuration, mta, mta config etc. i would suggest going with a sql based mail solution on a dedicated server if not a dedicated mail cluster.

Originally posted by zerphyte
the amount of accounts per server depends on the hardware specs, os, os configuration, mta, mta config etc. i would suggest going with a sql based mail solution on a dedicated server if not a dedicated mail cluster.
even for 500 users only?
now i am on a redhat box with 1 gig of ram. ide drive. will it handle 500 users? with the right mta config?

yuck linux.

you know round about how much traffic they will be pushing? for around 1-2 million emails a day that *should* be ok, of course i would put freebsd and qmail on it with a sql backend. i really *highly* recommend you use a sql backend if its going to expand to 5k users in the future.