DoveCot vs Cyrus-Imapd Performance

[Les Mikesell]

On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 01:55, Ow Mun Heng wrote:

> I recently had a chat with a friend and he was telling me dovecot is
> turning out to be not only simpler in configuration but was also
> faster(?) than cyrus-imapd.
> 
> To Run a imap server serving say a big corporation, heck even a _big_
> ISP, which would have been better? Cyrus or dovecot? Has anyone any
> experience with running both and testing/playing with either?
> 
> What are your thought and.....

I haven't done any testing, but I'd expect Cyrus to be slightly better
once the mailboxes are big and it has the advantage of handling shared
folders.  However, the difference may not be enough to be worth learning
an entirely new way to manage email.  Which mailbox type are you using
with dovecot?  I'd expect that to make more difference that Cyrus vs.
dovecot.   Mbox format (one file) will be faster for delivery and
first access (and if you use POP and delete on the server, that's all
you ever do).  Maildir (one file per message) will be faster at
deleting individual messages and moving to other folders via IMAP, and
will have fewer problems if you have multiple IMAP connections to
the same mailbox.  Dovecot can use either format; Cyrus has a unique
one message per file format.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com