Re: [SM-USERS] Sendmail vs. SMTP - - pros, cons?

[Paul L. <pa...@sq...>]

On 9/26/06, WJCarpenter <bil...@ca...> wrote:
> > Can anyone provide some comparison between Sendmail and SMTP for
> > sending outgoing mail from the server? Are there advantages of one
> > over the other, or disadvantages? Are there reasons why I should use
> > one rather than the other for SquirrelMail?
>
> With sendmail, you probably get a mild efficiency improvement.
>
> With sendmail, you probably get a boatload of generally tolerable quirky behavior.
>
> With SMTP, you reduce your dependency on the host environment because you're just speaking a
> protocol and not calling some specific program.
>
> With SMTP, you go through port 25 (or whatever you configure), so your internal protections
> against spam, viruses, DoS, and on and on, are are likely to operate more consistently between
> your SM traffic and your "all other" traffic.
>
> Me?  I'd always choose SMTP unless there were some particular issue that had me stuck, and
> sendmail was a cure.  However, I'm biased because I dislike sendmail for non-SM reasons (and
> even though I use something else that emulates it :-).

I am partial to SMTP because you get immediate feedback (on the
compose screen) for some types (certainly not all) of errant mails
(for example, try sending to a locally hosted domain to a non-existant
email account), where Sendmail will take the message no matter what
and you might get a bounce later (some people like that, I guess,
though).

SMTP is really nice if you do things like set up a specific port for
your webmail senders in Postfix for which a different set of
restrictions/filters is applicable compared to your outward-facing
SMTP service/port.