What is the best open-source email solution package

Solution 1:

"Complete but minimal and light weight solution". Uhm...

Just build it yourself. It'll be a lot more flexible, and you'll have a better chance of fixing it when it breaks. The components I'd use are:

• Postfix
• bogofilter (spam filtering)
• Postfixadmin (for the web interface)
• Dovecot (IMAP/POP access)

Solution 2:

I've had good luck with Zimbra at a previous company. The web interface is nice and all the components are self-contained, and the support forums are wonderful. It is basically all the popular open source mail tools bundled together with a slick interface.

However, these days I would (and do) outsource my mail handling to Google Apps for my domain.

Solution 3:

Don't forget about Exim. Its a pretty straight forward, clearly documented (make that excellent documentation) and well supported by it's community. I have used Qmail, Postfix, and Exim. Exim without a doubt has served me best.

Of course the whole thing is subjective and any of the mentioned applications would work just as good as any other.

Solution 4:

Second the recommendation to outsource. Yes, you could set up and run a mailserver yourself, but that means you're the one getting the page at oh-dark-thirty when something breaks. I like Fastmail, but there are plenty of other companies out there (e.g. Google).

If you need to run this system in-house for some reason, Zimbra meets your requirements and my employer's instance (supported by a 24-hour NOC) works fairly well.