Opinion - Dovecot or Courier

[JoshDylan]

Well I know a lot of people have there own preference on what mail server they use. I have done a good amount of research and I personally think Dovecot is the best choice only if you know how to properly administer your server/vps.

But, im curious to see what all of you think!

[garrettp]

Dovecot only because there is a significant memory overhead reduction and I haven't incurred any additional administration overhead by switching servers to it. Plus it makes for a cleaner process list.

[lbeachmike]

Only 8 votes is all that cpanel users can come up with on this? I'm leaning toward switching to Dovecot, but was looking for something more compelling in terms of a consensus

[cPanelTristan]

Dovecot has the following benefits:

- Lower memory usage, which is ideal on systems with memory constraints
- More verbose logging

It does have issues with time skew, where any machine that does not properly control the time and has it constantly going shifting can have Dovecot bail. Usually, using something like ntp rather than rdate will help to correct any time skew issues on a machine.

[lbeachmike]

What is the downside of the fact that with dovecot, the trash will not automatically expunge? Does this mean that users will end up with undeleted trash and thus there will be lots of extra storage space being hogged up on the server? Or accounts more quickly hitting their quotas if users don't tend to their email account management?

I'd like to make the switch, but slightly concerned about this.

Thanks.

Mike

[cPanelMichael]

Hello Mike

There is an open feature request that deals with the trash mail with Dovecot. It can be found at:

Dovecot Trash Mail

The tentative plan is for this feature to be included with cPanel version 11.34. In the meantime, some users simply add a cron job to the system that compares mtimes of the files to determine when to delete the trashed mail.

Thank you.

[crazyaboutlinux]

before moving to dovcot i have few questions hope somebody Help!

1) currently we are using courier as mail server, will there be any issue arise if i change to dovcot ??

2) there is following option at mail server selection, should i have to uncheck this box or keep as it is ?

Convert Mailbox Format
    
Convert mailbox settings file format to new mail server's format during migration

When checked, the settings files for each mailbox will be converted into the format for the new mail server. This includes information about read messages, mailbox subscriptions, etc. Unchecking this box will cause your clients to lose their mailbox settings but will speed up the migration. 

[cPanelMichael]

1) currently we are using courier as mail server, will there be any issue arise if i change to dovcot ??

There are no additional changes required after switching to Dovecot. It should be a seamless change.

2) there is following option at mail server selection, should i have to uncheck this box or keep as it is ?

The only time you should leave that option unchecked is if you have a large amount (1000+ depending on the server hardware) of email accounts on the server. Even then, you can leave the option checked if you do not mind allowing the migration time to complete.

Thank you.