Dovecot is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

IMAP In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

and

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, i ...

server for

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, written primarily with security in mind.

Timo Sirainen Timo Sirainen, born 1979, is a Finnish programmer also known under the handles "cras" and "tss". Sirainen is the original author of the IRC-client Irssi and the POP/ IMAP server Dovecot. Sirainen lives in Helsinki, Finland. In 2006, Sirainen b ...

originated Dovecot and first released it in July 2002. Dovecot developers primarily aim to produce a lightweight, fast and easy-to-set-up open-source

email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...

server. The primary purpose of Dovecot is to act as a mail storage server. The mail is delivered to the server using some mail delivery agent (MDA) and is stored for later access with an

email client An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email. A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...

(mail user agent, or MUA). Dovecot can also act as mail proxy server, forwarding connection to another mail server, or act as a lightweight MUA in order to retrieve and manipulate mail on remote server for e.g. mail migration. According to th
Open Email Survey
as of 2020, Dovecot has an installed base of at least 2.9million IMAP servers, and has a global market share of 76.9% of all IMAP servers. The results of the same survey in 2019 gave figures of 2.6million and 76.2%, respectively.

Features

Dovecot can work with standard

mbox Mbox is a generic term for a family of related file formats used for holding collections of email messages. It was first implemented in Research Unix, Fifth Edition Unix. All messages in an mbox mailbox are Concatenation, concatenated and store ...

Maildir The Maildir e-mail format is a common way of storing email messages on a file system, rather than in a database. Each message is assigned a Computer file, file with a unique name, and each mail folder is a file system directory containing these fil ...

, and its own native high-performance ''dbox'' formats. It is fully compatible with UW IMAP and Courier IMAP servers' implementation of them, as well as mail clients accessing the mailboxes directly. Dovecot also includes a mail delivery agent (called ''Local delivery agent'' in Dovecot's documentation) and an LMTP server, with the optional

Sieve A sieve (), fine mesh strainer, or sift is a tool used for separating wanted elements from unwanted material or for controlling the particle size distribution of a sample, using a screen such as a woven mesh or net or perforated sheet m ...

filtering support. Dovecot supports a variety of authentication schemas for

, POP and message submission agent (MSA) access, including CRAM-MD5 and the more secure DIGEST-MD5. With version 2.2, some new features have been added to Dovecot, e.g. additional IMAP command extensions, has been rewritten or optimized, and shared mailboxes now support per-user flags. Version 2.3 adds a message submission agent, Lua scripting for authentication, and some other improvements.

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

includes Dovecot for

services since Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard. In 2017,

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

, via the Mozilla Open Source Support program, conducted a security audit on the Dovecot software, the first public audit of the Dovecot code. The team that performed the audit was extremely impressed with the quality of the dovecot code, writing that "despite much effort and thoroughly all-encompassing approach, the Cure53 testers only managed to assert the excellent security-standing of Dovecot. More specifically, only three minor security issues have been found in the codebase, thus translating to an exceptionally good outcome for Dovecot, and a true testament to the fact that keeping security promises is at the core of the Dovecot development and operations.".

References

External links

*
Official docs
with how-tos and documentation {{Email servers Free email server software Free software programmed in C Email server software for Linux Software using the MIT license Software developed in Finland

Features

See also

References

External links