For what reasons did you choose to use Mail::Toaster?

[matt]

For what reasons did you choose to use Mail::Toaster?

[celtic]

It's simple... I'm no FBSD guru... but i needed a Qmail server.... and ur setup.... i finaly understood some of it... It wasn't all chinese...

[hertie]

I simply gave it a shot and was very surprised that all of a sudden I had a working mailserver at my disposal without knowing what I was doing..

Just the kind of user you like on a support forum, eh?

[chny]

It came highly recomended by a friend I trust who run email servers with, compared to my setup, very many users.

After having batteled trough the install back then I got kind of hooked seeing as it's mostly a "do and forget" setup.

Stability is also nice and the features it supports, allthough appearing to me as a whee bit undocumentet at times, are great.

Mail list support is also great and the general knowledge of the list combined is very impressive.

Friendlyness in the comunity is also a great aspect of this project. Continuous support and possiblity to actually buy expertise is reassuring for those who use it (me not included). Even for us who doesn't actually use your purchased services, it's comforting to know that people actually do and find your time worth their money. This puts some weight behind the project.

The fact that it's activly developed is also really great.

[robertclemens]

I had always needed to install everything manually on all new machines. It took some time to install FreeBSD, update everything, install all the programs, make sure all the configs are correct, etc. But with the toaster I wrote a script to do all this for me based on your toaster setup. It automates it. All I have to do now is install FreeBSD via CDROM, then put the script on the box and execute. I can then walk away and come back later to a completely running machine. (Things of course have to be tweaked for this to work). If a one word answer was required, it would simply be "time." Thanks matt! =]

[tick]

I needed a mail-server capable of having multiple domains, and preferably using mysql for users.
Ive tried some howto's about postfix, but it never worked as smooth as the installation guide for your Toaster

[adam]

Having never built high-traffic mail server before, I was looking for something that would grow with our company.  The mail server I was tasked to build had to be stable and perform well.  After doing a ton of research into mail servers that supported virtual domains, I came across Matt's Toaster.  I evaluated the toaster and it met each of our requirements.  It's proven to be extremely stable, easy to upgrade and configure, feature-rich and a strong performer under load.  We eventually moved the toaster into production and haven't looked back since.

[justinjb]

I had been using Qmail for years before, but was migrating away from Solaris and Linux to use FreeBSD. I wanted the ability to do Virtual Domains, and wanted ease of maintenance.

After searching far and wide, Matt's Toaster had everything I wanted and MORE!

SMTPD-AUTH, POP3-SSL, IMAP-SSL, webmail, etc.

Good job Matt.

[krueger]

Why repeat someones good work?  Matt's toaster script had some features I wanted and by all mean it saved me time not to figure out the quirks to make them work.  I'm a long time FreeBSD fan and now Apple OSX.  Gives me more time to work on XF86 drivers.

[sean]

I have been dickering with getting qmail up and running on various linux distros for some time. I had some success (as in a working mail server), but I was never able to get an industrial strength setup without lots of pain and hand tweaking. Like virus scanning, spamassasin, etc.

Then two things occured to me:

1) Looking at netcraft, most, if not all of the really major sites use FreeBSD. I dont know where I have been, but maybe there is something to that...? So I started, after years (hell, a decade...) to *really* look into the BSD's. I am not sure what it was that I didnt get before, but I *get* it now. FreeBSD. Its the stable server platform of choice for the highest bandwidth sites on the net. I guess it can be good enough for me too.

2) Qmail is great, but I was having trouble getting it working along with all the other things you want/need in order to have an industrial strength solution. Now I have run across the toaster... And I was a huge Perl fan already... But being that I was tied to the linux kernel for so long, I just hadnt come across it until now. Now I feel silly...

So I am going to spend the next few weeks migrating over to all this and I can already tell I am going to like it. I will keep you updated on how it goes...

Cheers!

[twa]

We wanted to throw out our NT4.0/Exchange 5.5 combo, and we wanted to see if we could build the replacement with open source software. If nothing else, we techies would piss off some of the powerpoint heads. Someone pointed us to qmail, and an innocent little link on one of Bernstein's pages introduced me to Mr. Simerson here

We ran the version 1.7 toaster on an old P166 with 32MB RAM for over a year without a single incident (and no spam and virusfiltering). We had about ten accounts on the box, each subscribed to every high volume mailing list we could find. In all, the little scrapped PC received over 300.000 mails that year, and most of them were forwarded to other accounts both on and off the server as part of the testing. That disk swapped like there was no tomorrow...

The toaster is a very hands-off kind of system, something I highly appreciate after being in the sysadmin trenches for nearly 15 years. The fact that Matt run live toasters also helps. You just know that every new little widget and knob on new toasters are useful one way or another.


"What the hell happened to all the spam ?!?"
  - some guy in my company

[David Pierron]

My reasons are very simple :: It's FREE Open Source Software that rivals anything I could buy.

I started Web Hosting on Windows NT4 ... I purchased a book by Mark Minasi called Mastering Windows NT Server 4 ... Bigger than a phone book hard cover ...  In there, he turns his readers on to a FREE Windows mail server that was apparently started by Microsoft developers, but was left unfinished ...  You could download this for free and run it on your Windows machine ...  There is a support mailing list for it and some people have created plugins and such to make these services do what you want ...

As I participated in the list and grew in size hosting sites, it became very apparent that these band aids that were written around this outdated software were way too much to manage ... Then there were issues with sending certain types of email to Yahoo or something that would back up a mail queue, and the reasons for this were the inability to do ESMTP or something ...  People started talking about solutions, and several people suggested bringing up a Linux box and throwing your outbound mail to Qmail since it supported this ...

After going on to Windows 2000 Servers, I ran Imail for a while which was around $1500 ... The newer versions are much more, and forget about their anti-spam and anti-virus offerings ...  They would put me in the poor house ...

So, the more I read on the outdated Microsoft software list, the more Qmail was mentioned and eventually "Chairman of the Bored" posted about the Qmail Toaster with a link to Matt's site ...  He is on the Toaster list as well, but I don't think he uses that name there ...

So I brought up a FreeBSD 4.7 box, and began installing Matt Simerson's Mail Toaster ...  I got it to work and everything and eventually moved my primary domain to the box ...  Then shortly thereafter a bunch of SPAM stuff was added and Virus scanning to the latest Toaster, and without even trying to attempt completing it all on my own, I hired the man himself to bring my FreeBSD 4.8 box up to speed on the latest Toaster ...  With everything else going on within my network, the intricacies of mail servers need not occupy my thoughts, so Matt is scheduled when possible and affordable to bring the Toaster to its latest and greatest ...

So there's my story ... and the rest is history ...  Maybe someday I will learn how to do it all myself, but ... that remains highly doubtful ...  

[markbnj]

Well
for one, I am a budding Wireless ISP, just building my network, and infrastructure.  (Yes, I know there's no way to justify a Business Plan...It's a sideline...)

Well  I was sick of the bug fixes for linux/mandrake (started at 6.00? ?? years ago?)

I was sick of upgrading,and hoping it would be secure, so I went with OPENBSD, after hearing of its security track record. (http://openbsd.org" target="_blank">http://openbsd.org )

At any rate, I needed a solid mail server, so looked into Qmail.
While I was installing/uninstalling qmail 2-3 times, I heard about toasters.

SO I tried to find a mail toaster that ran on OPENBSD and qmail.
Well FREEBSD and OPENBSD ARE (I understand) KISSING cousins...

SO here I am, attempting to get myself in business and running finally!

Markbnj at excite.com

[Valken]

I've choosen mail toaster because people told me it was the best/easiest way to have a mail server correctly protected again spam and viruses.

Of course, I believe them.
Then I had a problem when doing the installation.
Some updates and it worked.

Then yesterday I've done a qmail cdb and my machine rejected email from different places without specific rules.

So, I come here and find a similar problem that helped me to resolve the problem.

It may be a VERY good reason to choose mail toaster in the fact it's a bit like a professionnal product.

That also mean for me that as soon as I earn enough money I will seriously consider to chosse something to send from the wish list

Regards

Valken (Ryo Saeba in the mailing list)

[adams]

Well I chose the mail-toaster after I was given the task from junior server admin to senior server admin to create a new mail server.

I had looked at most of the linux toasters but none of them fit with my companies policy of FreeBSD or nothing (Only one windows server, heh). It took me a few trys to get my first 2.5 toaster running but after that it was all a breeze... hee hee all my posts on the mail forum may say otherwise but overall this was the easiest most friendly to build mail toaster of them all.

The support level is head and shoulders above most other projects of this type. Matt is very patent person when it comes to someone asking "It won't work, why won't it work?" He gives some of his free time to helping us get a very good mail product running.

BTW you didn't mention my donation in the toaster-watcher.pl heh
Yea I will give you a donation as soon as I get some more money. With all my satisfied mail customers. I hope that is soon.