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
http://www.zsd.co.za
Office: +27 +21 683-1388 Fax: +27 +21 64-1106
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 46827, Glosderry, 7702, South Africa
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