First I apoligize if this is the wrong place - perhaps it belongs in "hosting software"?

It's just that I've experienced a few webhosts and the email functionality provided is always very different.

Basically we want to control email traffic. We'd like to limit message sizes and block spam. The latter we accomplish using spam filters; the former seems more difficult.

Currently we use the cludgy solution of having MailMan lists for our important public addresses like vacancies@, info@ - the solution is cumbersome - MailMan was not really designed as a substitute for "distribution lists" but at least it limits the size and stops a fair amount of spam and viruses. However we forget trying to limit all the personal accounts.

I know setting up a proxy email server to do this work for us might eliminate some of the hassles but we haven't got around to that yet.

So basically what I'm asking is are there any plans that offer more fine tuning over email? Specifically more blocking options and a way to better configure distribution lists? Is it worth it looking into ProcMail?

Thanks in advance.

Depending on your MTA there's likely a maximum message size configuration option. I know there is for both Sendmail (which we used to use) and Postfix. We limit incoming mail to 10MB attachments.

As for distribution lists, Mailman 2.0.x is not great for this, but supposedly Mailman 2.1 will be better at it.

Some people just use /etc/aliases entries for distribution lists.

For our internal addresses like support/sales/info/webmaster/billing@modwest.com, we use shared IMAP mailboxes so we can all read them. Reply flags are global so once one of us replies everyone knows it.

Customer usernames need to be unique on our system, but aliases are unlimited, so everyone can have webmaster@theirdomain.com email addresses, but each login name needs to be different from everyone else.