Hello,

Looking for some input from those more experienced than I.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts and time to reply.

Looking to move my email services from google to my VPS.

Currently a 512MB Fedora 15 Linode.
Typical LAMP stack running and hosting about 10 domains via Virtual Name hosting configs in Apache.

Not only for the privacy reasons but the insulting and poor choices of google it is time to move.

Questions:
Is 512MB really adequate for a LAMP and Mail?

Postfix vs Dovecot vs ???

Looking for users (very limited) to have web access and imap access. iPhone and Androids will be used to access IMAP accounts.

One of the most important features I am looking for is spam control.

Thank you so much for your thoughts, experiences, et al.

Steven

I run web and mail on one linode 512. It's a bit of a stretch but it does work.


You need an MTA (mail transfer agent) to send mail to and receive mail from the Internet. Postfix seems to be the most popular these days and it's not so hard to configure.

You need an IMAP server to let you download, read, and file your own mail. Dovecot, Courier, and Cyrus are popular. Cyrus is really aimed at big setups so maybe you should forget that one.

You will likely want spamassassin to catch spam. It's a memory hog but it does its job well.

You might want to do some reading at http://library.linode.com/email

This step by step guide is a good starting point:

http://www.howtoforge.com/virtual-users-and-domains-with-postfix-courier-mysql-and-squirrelmail-ubuntu-12.10

In my experience, getting mail to run properly is a huge PITB -- not worth it. Postfix etc is easy enough to set up, but delivery is a total nightmare. Every mail service and ISP has their own "spam" rules, and it's impossible to comply with them all. For instance, after much anguish, I finally learned that Yahoo! uses a *soft whitelist* for email. That is, if you are not an approved email sender, your emails will be spammed. It is a huge hassle to get on their whitelist.

I finally decided to just outsource my send-mail functions to Amazon SES. Receiving is not a problem to do on your own.

@sednet Thanks for the input and information. Time to try squeezing in an MTA

@neo Thank you for the tutorial link.

@deadwalrus Thanks for the tip. I have yet to encounter issues with my domains sending mail to yahoo accounts. I will have to look further into this issue.

Thanks.
Steven

Just tell google NO!