Dovecot is a secure open-source server for Linux and UNIX systems with support for IMAP and POP3 protocols. It is designed for secure email access, prioritizing security to ensure safety of user data.
As an open source POP3 and IMAP server for Linux/UNIX-like systems, the Dovecot project is designed primarily with security in mind. While coded in C, several techniques are utilized to avoid common pitfalls. Dovecot is completely compatible with standard mbox and maildir formats as well as the UW-IMAP and Courier IMAP servers' implementations. Additionally, it's easy to migrate from these servers to Dovecot. There are plans to support storing emails in SQL databases.
Setting up Dovecot is an uncomplicated process and it doesn't require special maintenance. The only thing you need is to ensure authentication is working properly. If your users are in /etc/passwd, there is hardly anything you have to do. Dovecot should deliver quick performance. Its indexes don't require scanning through all the data in the mailbox, so it gets most of the wanted information from the index with minimal effort. Dovecot's indexes can scale to huge amounts of messages per mailbox without slowing down. Testing on up to 367,000 mails has been performed, but it should have no problem managing millions.
The Dovecot project requires very little memory. Most of it goes to mmap()ed index and mailbox files. Therefore, if the operating system is low on memory, it can simply drop those memory pages without storing them in swap. Connections are handled separately in processes, with each one requiring around 100kB of swappable memory. However, it's essential to note extensions like SORT and THREAD will require more memory to work. Dovecot is failsafe. Indexes do have potential for causing significant problems, but Dovecot does sanity checks to ensure data is correct before using it. Any crashes are considered a bug and fixed, even if it happens only by deliberately poking the index files.
Setting up Dovecot is an uncomplicated process and it doesn't require special maintenance. The only thing you need is to ensure authentication is working properly. If your users are in /etc/passwd, there is hardly anything you have to do. Dovecot should deliver quick performance. Its indexes don't require scanning through all the data in the mailbox, so it gets most of the wanted information from the index with minimal effort. Dovecot's indexes can scale to huge amounts of messages per mailbox without slowing down. Testing on up to 367,000 mails has been performed, but it should have no problem managing millions.
The Dovecot project requires very little memory. Most of it goes to mmap()ed index and mailbox files. Therefore, if the operating system is low on memory, it can simply drop those memory pages without storing them in swap. Connections are handled separately in processes, with each one requiring around 100kB of swappable memory. However, it's essential to note extensions like SORT and THREAD will require more memory to work. Dovecot is failsafe. Indexes do have potential for causing significant problems, but Dovecot does sanity checks to ensure data is correct before using it. Any crashes are considered a bug and fixed, even if it happens only by deliberately poking the index files.
What's New
Version 1.2.7: N/A