Applicable to:
- Plesk for Linux
Question
How to install a local mail server or switch between mail servers in Plesk for Linux?
Answer
Plesk allows to install the following mail components and switch between them using Plesk Installer:
-
SMTP servers
- Postfix
- Qmail -
IMAP/POP3 servers
- Dovecot
- Courier
Note: Changing SMTP server does not affect mailboxes, but changing IMAP server may affect mailboxes. Visit this KB article to learn more about potential issues.
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Go to Tools & Settings and click Updates and Upgrades.
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On the Updates and Upgrades page, click Add/Remove Components.
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On the Add/Remove Components page, expand Mail Hosting and select required mail components:
-
SMTP servers
- Postfix (default)
- Qmail -
IMAP/POP3 servers
- Dovecot (default)
- Courier
-
-
Click Continue to begin the installation.
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Connect to a Plesk server via SSH.
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Start Plesk Installer:
# plesk installer
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Proceed to the "Main components list for Plesk" menu.
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In the "Main components list for Plesk" menu, expand "Mail hosting".
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In the "Primary components list/mail" menu, select required mail components using their numbers:
-
SMTP servers
- Postfix (default)
- Qmail -
IMAP/POP3 servers
- Dovecot (default)
- Courier
-
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Go back to the "Main components list for Plesk" menu.
-
Begin the installation.
Additional Information
-
Instructions for Plesk on Windows Server are available in this KB article.
-
To configure external SMTP server in Plesk, visit this KB article.
Comments
10 comments
Is it safe to change the IMAP from Courier to Dovecot (and vice versa) if there are already lots of email accounts on the server? I am concerned, if changing the IMAP/POP3 servers deletes any user data (passwords, configs, etc.) as we have lots of domains with emails on the our plesk server.
And another question: We like to change from Courier to Dovecot as the new Plesk Obsidian now enables us to select individual SSL/TLS-Certificates for IMAP. On the current state we have told our customers to use our server name (i.e. our-server.com) when connecting via IMAP to their customer domains (i.e. customer-domain.com) and selected a certificate for our-server.com in "tools->ssl-certificates->certificate for email". By this they don't get any certificate warnings. So when we change this now, will the server still use this certificate until we chose a different certificate for the custom-domain.com? That would be good to know, or otherwise we would need to inform our customers in advance of this change.
Hello @Ole
It is safe to switch from Courier to Dovecot, user data will not be affected.
After switching to dovecot mail server will be secured by certificate from "tools and settings > ssl-certificates > certificate for email" in case mail clients using server name as the mail server.
Thanks George,
the switch from Courier to Dovecot mainly worked good, but we still have some issues afterwards:
* Email folders now have two folders for sent messages: One is named "sent", the other "sent messages". All sent messages prior this change are in "sent messages" and all sent messages after this change are stored in "sent".
* The same happened for spam folder: now there are 2 folders: "spam" and "junk"
* We have difficutlies with special chars in folder names, see https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010139880?page=1#comment_360000871899
The rest works good.
Hello Ole
Thank you for letting us know.
Talking, about mail folders, you may try merging them, for example, as described here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16476944/merging-two-dovecot-maildirs
Your comment in https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010139880 will be checked.
Is it safe to switch to Postfix from Qmail on a Ubuntu server?
Hello @Vasil,
Yes, usually there're no issues when doing such change.
Moreover, Postfix provides more functionality like SNI and autodiscovery.
Hi Is it possible to just install postfix only without any IMAP (Courier/Dovecot)
I wish to use only certain SMTP features of postfix and will not be hosting any email addresses (no IMAP/POP3 needed)
Thanks.
@Adrian Chan yes, go to tools&settings > Updates > Add/Remove components > Mail hosting and remove IMAP
Lev Iurev HI, I've justed install both Postfix/Dovecot and tried to remove Dovecot only, it does not allow me to uninstall Dovecot ONLY.
"The following components depend on the components you are going to remove or conflict with components you are going to install:
Postfix
These components have been selected for removal below. To confirm removal of all additional components, click Continue. To cancel removal or installation of certain components, select the corresponding option from the actions list."
Hi Adrian Chan indeed it is not possible to remove Dovecot as in Plesk it can work in pair with Postfix only. If you need only SMTP you may think about "MSMTP (relay only)"
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