Choosing between VMailMgr and Vpopmail

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Both VMailMgr and Vpopmail help manage virtual domains with virtual users. Both rely on qmail's virtual domain support and work by adding:

• A checkpassword replacement for POP3 authentication

• Utilities for adding virtual domains and users

• A Mail Delivery Agent (MDA) for delivery to virtual users' mailboxes

Both work with Courier-IMAP and qmail-pop3d. Both have Web interfaces available to allow domain managers to add and remove users.

The functional differences are minor. The most significant difference is that VMailMgr uses a separate Unix account for each virtual domain manager, and Vpopmail uses a single Unix account for all virtual domains and users. If you were hosting a huge number of virtual domains—thousands or more—this might be an important distinction. For more typical installations, though, the extra security afforded by using multiple Unix accounts probably works in VMailMgr's favor.

So how does one decide which to use?

First, make a detailed list of the features you must have. Both packages have all the basic features, so differences are more likely to appear with advanced features such as support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Structured Query Language (SQL), Authenticated Post Office Protocol (APOP), or quotas. Be sure to check the list archives of the respective packages for user-contributed add-ons before disqualifying a package.

If feature requirements don't eliminate one of the contenders, the next step is to try them both. They're both easy to install and configure, and if a picture is worth a thousand words, actually trying the prospective software is worth a thousand feature comparisons. Feature checklists are necessary, but features alone won't guarantee you'll like the way a particular package works.

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