Recommend MTA

[Bob Johnson]

On Saturday 06 March 2004 09:50 pm, Michael Madden <Michael Madden 
<madden at cmsrtp.com>> wrote:
> Which MTA is the recommended one to use on FreeBSD?
> I've noticed sendmail is installed by default, but
> my book I've been learning FreeBSD from (The Complete
> FreeBSD) only covers setting up postfix.  Should I
> go ahead a learn/setup sendmail?  If so, where's
> a good place to find a tutorial on setting it up
> on FreeBSD?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael

The best MTA for you is the one you are most comfortable with, assuming 
it does the job you need.  It may be that the one you have the best 
documentation for is the best one for you to use, at least until you've 
used it long enough to know what you don't like about it ;)

Sendmail is the default for historical reasons.  It's essentially the 
"Unix standard".  Postfix is quite popular, and has many supporters, 
and there is lots of documentation for it.  I've never used it so 
that's about the end of my knowledge about postfix.  Qmail similarly 
has many supporters.  It is usually very confusing to someone who is 
used to the sendmail way of doing things, because instead of one huge 
configuration file with a few helper files, there are a BUNCH of 
configuration files.  Similarly, instead of one big program that 
handles everything, qmail has several programs that each handle a 
different part of the job (which is where part of the confusion comes 
from: figuring out which program does the part you need to change).

My personal preference is Courier (http://www.courier-mta.org).  It's 
very similar to Qmail, but doesn't require as many patches to make it 
do what you want (or at least, to make it do what _I_ want).  The 
package includes a pop/imap server and a webmail server, although they 
are independent modules so you don't need to install them if you only 
need the MTA.  

I've also used sendmail, Cyrus, and qmail.  They all work.  Whether they 
meet your specific needs is hard to say.  One good rule of thumb is to 
read the documentation, and if it makes no sense to you, you might want 
to keep looking.

- Bob