The Courier Mail Server is a
mail transfer agent (MTA) server that provides
SMTP,
IMAP,
POP3,
SMAP,
webmail
Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are 1&1 Ionos, AOL Mail, G ...
, and
mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...
services with individual components. It is best known for its IMAP server component.
Courier can function as an intermediate mail relay, between an internal LAN and the Internet, or perform final delivery to mailboxes. Courier uses
maildirs as its native storage format and can also deliver mail to legacy mailbox files. Configuration files are in plain text format and may include
Perl scripts.
Courier can provide mail services for regular operating system accounts. Courier can also provide mail services for virtual mail accounts, managed by any of
LDAP directory service,
Berkeley DB,
MySQL or
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...
authentication database.
Parts of Courier, such as the
maildrop filtering system, the webmail and IMAP server, can also be installed as independent packages which can be used with other mail servers. Courier-IMAP is a particularly popular combination with
Qmail,
Exim, and
Postfix servers that are configured to use maildirs.
Courier's source compiles on most
POSIX-based operating systems based on
Linux and BSD-derived kernels. It uses SMTP extensions for list management
and spam filtering.
See also
*
Comparison of mail servers
References
External links
*
/www.courier-mta.org/ Courier-MTA website*
/www.courier-mta.org/install.html Installing and configuring Courier-IMAPbr>
Setting up a mail server- includes Courier as the IMAP component
Message transfer agents
Free email server software
Email server software for Linux
{{Email servers