easy admin mail server recommendation requested

[Erich Schubert]

Hi,

> Opinions about coding and feature-bloat are all over the map, but the
> authors of Postfix and Qmail have a good repuation for caution.

If you consider not even supporting SMTP AUTH "caution for feature
bloat", okay. I would call this "lack of essential features" in Qmail.
(And no, having twice as many LoC in patches than in original source
code is not good...)

> Many people like the way Mailman works and integrates with MTAs,
> including (especially) with Exim.  Mailman includes a not-too-sucky HTML
> archiver called Pipermail.  

Translations of pipermail are really bad (making a case distinction for
singluar and plural is not that hard). mhonarc is probably a better
choice for list archives, and unless you want them to be restricted to
members only (and do the annoying password thing with mailman) actually
very easy to setup. Basically just setup a local mailbox and feed
incoming mails to mhonarc. Works with any list, even list run by others.

Mailman is also very 'sucky' in the customization/localization area.
For example, to completely customize the text parts for mails you need
to make a new language. You can apparently chance the HTML source for
parts of the web sites, but not for mail templates (including the
"welcome" message, you can only provide text for part of it).
In the settings, a user can always choose your site default language as
well (disabling your customization), you cannot force him to use the
mail templates in "list language". This makes mailman a rather bad
choice for newsletters for example to customers.

Also I wouldn't say that mailman "integrates" well with other apps. For
example, it has an own user management. If you have already a user
database (for example the userids/passwords you use for your IMAP
mailboxes) I do not know a way you can use that for mailman
authentication. Yes, I am aware that many users will not have a local
account. Most users will never need to change their list preferences
anyway. But moderators and list admins will often be local users, and
then you do not want to have another password database...

Greetings,
Erich