19

I'm doing some development which will involve reacting to emails, and I'd like to use a local IMAP mail server for this.

I currently use Devnull SMTP server for testing of sending emails, but this just logs and discards messages, it doesn't do IMAP for checking incoming emails/mailboxes.

I don't need/want a full-blown server, just something lightweight I can easily start/stop as required.

Multi-platform is preferred, but feel free to provide answer for specific platforms also.

(A POP3-based server would also be acceptable for development use, since I'll be supporting both in my code anyway.)

OrangeDog
  • 36,653
  • 12
  • 122
  • 207
Peter Boughton
  • 110,170
  • 32
  • 120
  • 176

6 Answers6

14

Take a look at hMailServer.

Paul Alexander
  • 31,970
  • 14
  • 96
  • 151
  • I've used hMail on several of my domains for a few years now, very slick, lightweight server. – Neil N Apr 20 '09 at 21:51
  • I gave Mercury Mail Server and hMail server a whirl. hMail was much, much nicer to deal with. Easier to get installed and with a nice configurator. Very slick. (Of course, I was previously using sendmail built for SUA/Interix.) – Brian Reiter Jun 15 '09 at 12:22
  • I tried out loads for windows, you can't beat hmailserver there. – Razor Sep 20 '10 at 08:26
4

I consider JAMES the best mail server for development. And its portable too. Fully written in Java.

Nithesh Chandra
  • 1,840
  • 13
  • 12
2

Mercury Mail Server is a full featured mail server (minus webmail), however it is very light and should meet your need: Mercury Mail Server

Edit: Forgot to mention Windows/Netware only

Jimmie R. Houts
  • 7,728
  • 2
  • 31
  • 38
2

Check out courier for unix-based machines. I've run it for quite some time on a linux machine, and it's very nice. You can easily enable/disable the features you want, including SMTP, POP, IMAP, SMTP Auth, SSL versions of protocols, etc.

Benson
  • 22,457
  • 2
  • 40
  • 49
1

exim works nice even in windows via cygwin.

Persimmonium
  • 15,593
  • 11
  • 47
  • 78
0

Mdaemon is an excellent windows MTA. Lots of good reasons to use it in production too. Another different option is to use Gammadyne mailer in server mode.

MonkeyMagic
  • 321
  • 1
  • 3