Postfix

A widely deployed mail transfer agent.

Postfix is a mail transfer agent (MTA) that delivers mail between mail servers and local users. It accepts SMTP, queues messages, relays them to the next hop or delivers them to local mailboxes, and supports virtual hosting, content filtering, TLS encryption, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, and most other features of a modern internet mail server.

Wietse Venema started Postfix at IBM Research in 1998 (then called VMailer) as a security-focused replacement for Sendmail, the venerable but historically vulnerability-prone Unix MTA. The architecture is a small set of independent processes that talk through pipes and queue files, which limits the impact of any single component being compromised.

Postfix is the default MTA on most modern Linux distributions and is widely deployed by ISPs, universities, and self-hosters running mail servers. It pairs commonly with Dovecot for IMAP/POP3 delivery in self-hosted setups. The project is dual- licensed under the IBM Public License and EPL-2.0, and remains in active maintenance with Wietse Venema still contributing.

License: IBM Public License 1.0 OR EPL-2.0

Category: Networking

Website: http://www.postfix.org/

Install

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install postfix
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install postfix
Arch:          sudo pacman -S postfix
macOS:         already preinstalled

Authors

Wietse Venema (creator)

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