Re: [Exim] exim v's qmail and other MTA's

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Autor: I. Forbes
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A: Garry Byrne, exim-users
Assumpte: Re: [Exim] exim v's qmail and other MTA's
Hello Garry

On 20 Sep 2001, at 0:20, Garry Byrne wrote:

> New to the list as of today & looking at changing over to Exim from Qmail.
> We are an ISP and run about 3500 mail accounts some of which are made up of
> domains we also host.
>
> I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of any
> documentation comparing Exim's performance to that of Qmail and other
> MTA's. I would also be very interested in comments of personal experience
> from others that changed from qmail, postfix etc to Exim.


We moved from qmail to exim a few years ago. We handle about
350 mBytes, 6000 messages per day. Probably similar to yours -
cpu power is not an issue.

Our main motivation to drop qmail was its inefficient use of
bandwidth:

-   With qmail, one 100k e-mail addressed to 10 people at the same
    domain uses 10 x 100k bandwidth.  Exim would use about 110k. 


-   When somebody sends a 4 mB e-mail which gets bounced, qmail
    sends a 4 mB bounce, exim truncates the bounce to a reasonable
    size. 


-   qmail does not support recipient verification during the smtp
    conversation.  So if somebody sends you e-mail to a non existing
    user, you pay for the bandwidth both incoming and outgoing for
    the bounce message. Exim does - there is a bit of a debate
    whether to use it or not - we do use it. 


But the biggest problem with qmail is its licence which effectively
discourages "bazaar" development. Thus if you need additional
functionality you have to track down patches and install them
manually. With exim any feature that is worth having is probably
already included, you just have to read the documentation.

Good luck

Ian

PS the exim system filter is really cool!

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Ian Forbes ZSD
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