Third Party Server Ecosystem

UNDER SERIOUS CONSTRUCTION

This is a temporary page for notes on the ecosystem of third-party servers for the protocols that Chandler will need to support.

Because the email specs are open, and because the POP and SMTP protocols are so simple, there are a huge number of POP and SMTP products. Most POP and SMTP products -- and essentially all commercial POP and SMTP products -- deliver POP and SMTP as a side effect of their value proposition (e.g. anti-spam) or as a freebie to make their package look beefier.

Summary of protocols

• SMTP
• POP
• IMAP
• LDAP
• Jabber
• Kerberos
• Exchange (MAPI/Jungle.WebDAV)

SMTP

Sendmail for years was almost synonymous with SMTP. However, there have been a number of well-publicized security breaches of sendmail. (Not surprising, since it was designed at a time when Internet users didn't have to worry so much about vandals, theives, perverts, and jerks.) The Sendmail author developed a commercial version that is more heavyweight, but it faces stiff competition. Qmail, an open source program, was specifically designed to be more secure. It was followed by postfix, also designed to be more secure.

And SMTP server also comes with most of the IMAP offerings.

There is a survey of SMTP servers available. However, it is both old and limited to the *.net domain -- which is mostly ISPs. ISPs use a much higher percentage of Unix-based, public-domain code than businesses do.

• Sendmail.org and Sendmail.com (42% of *.net SMTP hosts -- September 2001 survey)
• Exchange or IIS SMTP (18%)
• qmail (17%) (ProductFAQ)
• Windows Ipswitch IMail (6%)
• UNIX smap (2%)
• UNIX IBM Postfix, formerly VMailer (1.5%)
• Other (13.5%)
• Courier ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, webmail, and mailing list services... (Not part of survey?)
• Netscape Messaging Server POP, IMAP, SMTP (essentially no showing in the survey)
• Sun ONE Messaging Server IMAP, SMTP, POP (essentially no showing in the survey)
• Mirapoint IMAP, POP SMTP hardware
• IronPort SMTP hardware
• Isode M-Switch

According to a 1998 survey by the qmail author, 90% of reachable hosts in the *.net TLD (not to be confused with Microsoft's .NET!) supported ESMTP.

The commercial version of Sendmail incorporates anti-spam.

Very nice tabular comparison of Sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim, and Courier.

Sysadmin-based reviews of smail, exim, sendmail, qmail, postfix, MMDF, zmailer.

POP

There are zillions of POP servers. While SMTP is a little tricky because of the different mailbox formats and risk of spammers hijacking the service, POP really truly is an incredibly simple protocol. It is even more of an afterthought than SMTP is.

• qpopper (open source)
• Sun ONE Messaging Server IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Mirapoint IMAP, POP SMTP hardware
• Courier POP component
• ipopd open source, formerly UW, ships with RedHat^?
• cucipop
• Exchange
• Oracle's Collaboration Suite IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Cyrus IMAP, SMTP, POP (CMU)
• Eudora WorldMail^? NT
• CommuniGate (hardware) IMAP, SMTP, POP

• RH email server
• Workgroup Mail POP, SMTP,IMAP
• Surgemail
• ShareMailPro
• Ability MailServer^?
• Merak Mail Server POP, SMTP, IMAP
• Sambar server
• POPular Server
• Isode
• alt-n MDeamon
• Workgroup Mail
• IMS for NT
• IMail
• MailSite
• Lotus Domino ?? does this do POP?
• Netscape Messaging Server POP, IMAP, SMTP
• inFusion
• SugarSoft
• Gordano
• Rockliffe MailSite^?
• MailTraq

Issues: virtual hosting?

IMAP

IMAP has fewer implementations than POP, in part because IMAP is a huge spec with a ton of features. IMAP has many features that would be client-side features in POP. IMAP packages also usually include SMTP and POP.

In accordance with some version of Murphy's law, the servers that exist not only have different IMAP feature sets, but different interpretations of the features.

Open source server:

• Cyrus IMAP, SMTP, POP (CMU)
• UW IMAP server
• Dovecot IMAP, POP
• Binc IMAP
• Novell Hula Server IMAP, POP, SMTP
• Courier ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, webmail, and mailing list services...

Commercial:

• CommuniGate Pro IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Isode Mailstore IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Sendmail Advanced Message Server IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Sun ONE Messaging Server IMAP, SMTP, POP (formerly iPlanet)
• Oracle's Collaboration Suite IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Eudora Internet Mail Server IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Microsoft Exchange IMAP, SMTP, POP
• Mirapoint IMAP, SMTP, POP hardware
• Lotus Domino IMAP, SMTP, POP

See The IMAP Connection for a more complete list.

Also see comparison of IMAP server features.

See the list of IMAP extensions

LDAP

Jabber

Kerberos

WebDAV^?)"> Exchange (MAPI/Jungle.WebDAV)

-- DuckySherwood - 09 Aug 2003