[Mailman-Users] Best Mail Program to Use w/ Mailman

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 11:20:05AM -0500, Beyer, Clay wrote:
> We are setting up a Debian web server and would like to use Mailman to
> manage a couple of mailing lists that we control. After some initial
> complications with Mailman and Postfix we decided to uninstall and
> reinstall everything, before we get going again, I just wanted to get an
> idea of what the best mail program, taken from the Mailman
> Documentation, to use with Mailman... Postfix, Qmail, Exim, or Sendmail.

I strongly recommend against qmail, as it is not suitable for professional
or even amateur use.

I have deployed the rest in various environments numerous times.  None is
"best" across the board, but each may be "best" depending on your environment,
your needs, and your mail system knowledge.  Roughly, and I emphasize
ROUGHLY speaking:

	- exim is the simplest to install and configure.   If your needs
	are straightforward and modest, this might be the best choice.

	- postfix is not as simple, but it *is* modular, well-designed,
	and quite capable of supporting complex environments.

	- sendmail is still more complex, but is widely known (in part
	because of its longevity) and there is a larger knowledge base
	for it than any other MTA.  Sendmail milters offer an extensive
	feature set for sufficiently-advanced administrators.

Personally, I tend to use sendmail and postfix -- in part because I'm
usually dealing with non-straightforward environments.  However, I would
advise that if you think can manage with exim, you should at least try.

Without having detailed knowledge of the factors above (environment,
needs, knowledge) it's tough to say much further than that, but: if
you're only handling mail for one domain, if you're only handling mailing
list traffic, if you're not running an associated POP/IMAP server, if
you're running a single server, if you're handling low to moderate
volumes of traffic, then my guess would be that exim will work very
well for you.

---Rsk