1 from ``Life with qmail''

2 ========================

3 (november 2007)

4 1.9. Comparison with other MTA's

5

6 A book could be written about this topic, but it would be tedious reading. Here's a quick comparison of qmail with some of the most common UNIX MTA's.

7

8 ┌────────┬────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────┐

9 │MTA │Maturity│Security│Features│Performance│Sendmailish│Modular│

10 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────┤

11 │qmail │medium │high │high │high │addons │yes │

12 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────┤

13 │Sendmail│high │low │high │low │x │no │

14 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────┤

15 │Postfix │medium │high │high │high │yes │yes │

16 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────┤

17 │exim │medium │low │high │medium │yes │no │

18 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────┤

19 │Courier │low │medium │high │medium │optional │yes │

20 └────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────┘

21

22 Sendmailish means the MTA behaves like Sendmail in some ways that would make a switch from Sendmail to the alternative MTA more user-transparent, such as the use of .forward files, /etc/aliases, and delivery to /var/spool/mail.

23

24 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard has reviews of many Unix MTAs at http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/Reviews/UnixMTSes/.

25 Another detailed comparison is available at http://www.geocities.com/mailsoftware42/.

26

27

28

29

30 from ``open source mail server comparison''

31 ===========================================

32 (november 2003)

33

34 This is a comparison between all the free open-source mail software solutions actually avalaible. I want to thanks all the sofware developers for developing such a great software for the open source community.

35

36 COURIER-MTA EXIM POSTFIX SENDMAIL QMAIL

37

38 Version: Courier-0.44.x Exim Version Postfix Version Sendmail qmail-1.03

39 4.2x 2.0 Patchlevel x 8.12.x

40

41 Managing Imap Exim: The Mail Postfix Sendmail The qmail

42 Transfer Agent Handbook

43

44 Licence: GPL GPL IBM Public ? Especial

45 License

46

47

48 Authenticated SMTP Login/CRAM-MD5 Login/Plain/ yes (using SASL) yes(using patch

49 CRAM-MD5 SASL)

50

51 SMTP over SSL/TLS yes ? ? ? patch

52

53 STARTTLS extension yes yes ? yes patch

54

55 POP before SMTP no ? Yes ? addon

56

57 Virtual Domains support yes yes yes yes yes

58

59 Supported Backends Ldap / MySQL / PostgreSQL Ldap / MySQL Ldap / MySQL Ldap Ldap patch/

60 MySQL patch

61

62 IPv6 support yes yes no (patch) yes patch

63

64 Included POP server yes (SSL support, Apop not no no no yes

65 included, SASL included)

66

67 Included IMAP server yes (SSL included) no no no no

68 Mailbox Format: Maildir /mbox/Maildir ++ Maildir/mbox/ Maildir/mbox mbox Maildir/mbox

69 mbx?

70

71 Quota support yes yes patch no patch /

72 addons

73

74 Mailing list manager couriermlm no ? ? ezmlm

75

76 Configurable

77 Deliver-Status-Notification yes yes no? ? no

78 (DSN)

79

80 Log analysing utilities no yes yes yes yes

81

82 Verbosity logging options: no yes yes ? yes

83

84 Web-based Administration yes no yes / no yes/no yes / no

85

86

87

88 SUBJECTIVE CHARACTERISTICS:

89

90 COURIER-MTA EXIM POSTFIX SENDMAIL QMAIL

91

92 Security: ? low-medium high low high / very high

93

94 Installation: medium medium easy - easy medium-difficult

95 medium

96

97 Configuration: medium easy-medium easy difficult easy

98

99 Performance: ? medium high low high

100

101 Maturity/status low low medium high medium

102 :

103

104 Documentation: low high medium-high high high (but sometimes confusing)

105

106 Features: high medium-high medium high low (There are many patches available for adding

107 Features)

108