From: Mark Crispin Newsgroups: comp.mail.imap Subject: Re: Best IMAP server, with regard to security, stability, speed and ease/power of configuration Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 08:45:29 -0800 Organization: University of Washington Lines: 41 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva1.cac.washington.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: nntp6.u.washington.edu 1069433132 73694 (None) 140.142.17.40 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu In-Reply-To: On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Morten W. Petersen wrote: > I'm setting up a new server which will have IMAP support, and I need to figur e > out what the best IMAP server is. What is "best" depends upon your requirements. > Security is first priority, then stability, speed and configuration. It's a plus > if it supports shared folders. I see that you did not mention "interact with legacy mail stores" or "co-exist with shell users and their mail." If these two issues are not requirements, then I would say Cyrus. Cyrus is specifically designed as an enterprise, black-box (no shell users) server; and for maximum performance in that environment. Cyrus matches all of your listed criteria. If you need interaction with legacy mail stores and/or co-existence with shell users and their mail, then go with UW imapd. Similarly, for a server for a SOHO environment, UW is probably much less hassle. UW matches your listed criteria, but you have to use a non-default configuration to get some of these (e.g. shared mailboxes). I noticed that you did not mention protocol compliance. That should be on your list of requirements since there are servers which are known to have compliance bugs. Fortunately, both UW and Cyrus satisfy this requirement. FWIW, I'm the author/maintainer of UW imapd; but I have no hesitation to recommend Cyrus to people who are Cyrus' target audience. We work very closely together, and regularly hold code-test bakeoffs. A good reference that compares Cyrus and UW and helps you determine which is right for you is "Managing IMAP", by Dianna Mullet & Kevin Mullet, published by O'Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00012-X. Even though your choice is almost certainly doing to be Cyrus, you should get this book anyway as a reference source for how to set up and configure your server. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.