Postfix is a free open source mail transfer agent (MTA), a computer program for the routing and delivery of email. It is intended as a fast, easy-to-administer, and secure alternative to the widely-used Sendmail MTA.
Postfix is the default MTA for a number of operating systems such as Ubuntu.
Although IBM supported the Postfix development, it abstains from control over its evolution.
Key Features
- Transport Layer Security (TLS).
- Delegation of SMTP policies to an external process (this allows Greylisting) and advanced content filtering.
- Different databases for maps: Berkeley DB, CDB, DBM, LDAP, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
- mbox-style mailboxes, Maildir-style mailboxes, and virtual domains.
- Address rewriting (envelope and header), VERP, SMTP-AUTH via SASL, and more.
- Milter support compatible with Sendmail milters.
- Using Policyd-weight, can check e-mail headers against various DNSBLs and for RFC compliance, and reject near-certain spam ahead of receiving the body of the messages, lessening server load.
- Junk mail control.
- Non-repeating (long) queue IDs.
Website: www.postfix.org
Support: Docs
Developer: Wietse Venema and others
License: IBM Public License
Postfix is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Email Servers | |
|---|---|
| Exim | Highly configurable mail transfer agent |
| OpenSMTPD | Implementation of the server-side SMTP protocol with additional extensions |
| mox | Modern, secure, all-in-one email server |
| DBMail | Enables storing and retrieving mail messages from a database |
| WildDuck | Opinionated email server |
| Stalwart | All-in-one mail and collaboration server |
| Mailu | Self-hosted mail server stack |
| Mail-in-a-Box | Self-hosted email server solution |
| Postfix | Popular mail transfer agent |
| Maddy | Composable all-in-one mail server |
| Haraka | Modern SMTP server |
| Dovecot | Secure POP3 server that supports mbox and maildir mailboxes |
| Courier | Integrated mail/groupware server |
| Cyrus IMAP | Email, contacts and calendar server |
| Zimbra | Zimbra Collaboration Suite |
| Modoboa | Mail hosting and management platform |
| Citadel | Exchange-killer groupware server |
| chasquid | SMTP server with a focus on simplicity, security, and ease of operation |
| Sendmail | Mail transfer agent for sophisticated mail configurations |
| qmail | Written as a more secure replacement for the Sendmail program |
| dma | DragonFly Mail Agent |
| DavMail | POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/Carddav/LDAP exchange gateway |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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