What’s the Best MTA for Security?

Postfix has the tightest focus on security of the three MTAs we’re examining. The main reason for this is that its maker, Wietse Zweitze Venema, is a well-known specialist in freeware security.

We can’t label Sendmail as a secure MTA, especially when Postfix was initially conceived as a way to address those weaknesses related to Sendmail.

For most use cases, Exim is pretty secure but still loses out to Postfix. Setting up your Postfix configuration offers better protection against abuse, spam, and exposure of sensitive data.

While it’s difficult to compare with the security offered by Gmail, you face less risk of being affected by a data breach when you choose Postfix.

Which MTA Offers the Best Performance?

Do Sendmail or Exim deliver better performance than Postfix?

Frankly, Sendmail is a weak contender. Exim is utilized for a plethora of high-volume web applications and is capable of handling a huge number of emails every hour. But extensive queues can negatively affect Exim servers’ queue-processing performance.

Postfix has a central queue manager (unlike Exim) and is able to handle queues to a higher standard and a more impressive speed.

Which MTA is the Most Reliable?

Sendmail is recognized as being an inefficient MTA compared to Postfix and Exim. It’s common to see system admins reporting random issues, and they tend to install Postfix or Exim instead.

They’re both drop-in alternatives to Sendmail and nearly equal with regards to reliability. But Postfix stays one step ahead due to its modular architecture: it’s made up of independent system parts that may be switched in the event of a failure. This offers a more reliable user experience.

Which MTA Can be Administered the Easiest?

All three MTAs feature a monolithic configuration file, but Exim offers the most configuration options. While Postfix has a focus on security, it affords an impressive degree of flexibility and simple administration.

That means it’s easier for beginner admins to set up than other MTAs. It actually implements the Sendmail CLI and is compatible with Sendmail mail filters anyway.

Still, Postfix offers less versatility than Exim: the latter has outstanding integration facilities and can provide system administrators what they need. In one form or another, Exim is capable of supporting most of the MTA features. Exim also goes with cPanel, which is one of the most well-known, widely-used control panels available to domain owners.

What’s the Main Reason to Pick Sendmail?

Sadly, Sendmail can’t compete with Postfix or Exim in any area, even usability. There’s no obvious reason to install this MTA, despite it being preinstalled on the majority of commercial Unix operating systems.

Sendmail is also portable, which can be utilized on non-Unix systems (including Windows). This may be a reason to choose it.

Using Plesk with MTAs

Plesk is a highly efficient, well-designed hosting platform that works alongside a mail server, empowering you to run mail services on the same machine you use for hosting websites.

The Postfix mail server and Courier IMAP come installed on Plesk for Linux by default, and MailEnable is on Plesk for Windows. Additional software supported is Dovecot and Qmail on Linux (shipped with Plesk), as well as SmarterMail or IceWarp on Windows (both of which must be installed separately).