which mail server is better suited for high volume?

Question

I'm planning out a project (web/mobile app) that would require a mail server that could handle hundreds of thousands connections per hour (both IMAP/POP and SMTP) and has the ability to interface with PHP (or python or whatever) to dynamically create, delete and check for mailboxes? This is not for spam stuff, I just need my app to generate random mailboxes (and static/permanent ones too) to receive mail and process it for items listed on my service. The little research I've done so far has turned up courier, dovecot, cyrus and haraka. I think the ability to scale and/or load balance (I'm new to these terms, pardon me) would also be a requirement.

Any ideas?

Do you need actual inboxes, or can you just pipe mail to a script? — ceejayoz, Sep 13 '12 at 18:32
Actual inboxes. They would have a lifespan of anywhere from a couple of minutes to a week. — crashintoty, Sep 13 '12 at 21:37

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 13 '12 at 19:31

2

What's a "high volume" in your view? regardless, pretty much any modern MTA will do the job, it's all comes down to preference one over another. I personally use Dovecot and Postfix.

answered Sep 13 '12 at 19:31

alexus

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Let's say high volume is whatever connections, sends, receives, retrieves, etc. that a small national email service provider handles per hour. (like a baby Gmail). – crashintoty Sep 13 '12 at 21:42

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 13 '12 at 20:37

I use dovecot and postfix.. and have worked well, I think the thing you need to make robust is the performance of the server... the balance will be done between servers, but the requests of mails will be done by an application, it must be lightweight, and like I said, if you say will have hundreds of thousands of connections, better if your servers are all in cloud

which mail server is better suited for high volume?

2 Answers2