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[DS-Dennis]

We are going to convert all mail servers at our systems to Dovecot. The conversion process should be seamless and incur no interruptions of service. The conversion will be transparent to end users and no message loss should occur either.

POP3 users might be prompted to re-download some messages, depending upon their configuration and the timing of message retrieval during the conversion process.

The pros of this system:

• There are some notable differences between Courier and Dovecot. For speed optimization, Dovecot retains an index of Maildirs currently in use.
  This can give individual logins process a slightly higher memory overhead than Courier login processes but the total memory consumption by all Dovecot processes will still be lower than all Courier processes in like scenarios.
• Improved IMAP Support for Mobile Devices.
• Support for IMAP IDLE for Dovecot mail servers, allowing near-real-time email delivery to your mobile device.
• Dovecot is highly configurable.
• It has BlackBerry® Fastmail support.

The cons of this system:

• Dovecot possesses no native functionality to empty the Trash folder at specified intervals.
  You would need to check and prune your Trash folder manually.

[DS-Dennis]

All systems are now converted and we have noted no errors at all.

Specific items in each Maildir, the keywords and UID list files for example, were converted to a format usable by Dovecot. The Courier specific versions of these files are left in place but no longer in use.