What's a good mail server for development use?

Question

I'm doing some development which will involve reacting to emails, and I'd like to use a local IMAP mail server for this.

I currently use Devnull SMTP server for testing of sending emails, but this just logs and discards messages, it doesn't do IMAP for checking incoming emails/mailboxes.

I don't need/want a full-blown server, just something lightweight I can easily start/stop as required.

Multi-platform is preferred, but feel free to provide answer for specific platforms also.

(A POP3-based server would also be acceptable for development use, since I'll be supporting both in my code anyway.)

Answer 1

Check out courier for unix-based machines. I've run it for quite some time on a linux machine, and it's very nice. You can easily enable/disable the features you want, including SMTP, POP, IMAP, SMTP Auth, SSL versions of protocols, etc.

Answer 2

Mdaemon is an excellent windows MTA. Lots of good reasons to use it in production too. Another different option is to use Gammadyne mailer in server mode.

• http://www.altn.com/products/mdaemon-email-server-windows/
• http://www.hmailserver.com/
• http://www.gammadyne.com/gm-list_management.htm

Answer 3

Take a look at hMailServer.

Answer 4

exim works nice even in windows via cygwin.

Answer 5

Mercury Mail Server is a full featured mail server (minus webmail), however it is very light and should meet your need: Mercury Mail Server

Edit: Forgot to mention Windows/Netware only

Answer 6

I consider JAMES the best mail server for development. And its portable too. Fully written in Java.