Any suggestion for smtp mail server in nodejs?

Question

I googled out quite a few but all are at best alpha versions, so it seems I will have to try an code one. Instead of coding one from scratch I would like to build on existing implementation, but a good one.

Any suggestions?

Pye

Were you intending to only receive email, or send as well? – Bouchard

Answer 1

SMTP server - I've used Simple SMTP in conjunction with mailparser. IMHO, these are the best tools on the Internet for building SMTP servers in Node.js.

UPDATE: Simple SMTP has been deprecated. Use SMTP server instead (the successor of the Simple SMTP module).

Epithet

Also, I don't like Haraka. :) – Epithet

interesting. Any specific reasons you don't like Haraka? Too complex, or something like that? – Overrate

@Overrate Yes, pretty much. Haraka is way too heavy for me, and there seems to be a much larger learning curve. The simplicity of simplesmtp in conjunction with mailparser is what sold me on these tools. I built a secure (TLS) mail server that authenticates users from a DB, parses incoming messages, allows users to upload files to the system by simply sending an email to a specific email address, and more - all under 400 lines of code. If you need a feature like SPAM filtering, Haraka might be the way to go. – Epithet

Simple smtp looks very promising to me. Just hook into the events generated by the server and handle the incoming mails in the way you need to. I will definitely use it. Thx. – Entrant

@tfmontague smtp-server is written by the same author and is the successor to Simple SMTP. – Bustup

MailIn server use for receiving mail, parses them. – Matriculation

Answer 2

Haraka: https://github.com/baudehlo/Haraka

Is a full featured mail server in node.js - should do everything that you need.

Hortative

Answer 3

RFC 2821 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2821) is not too complex, you should be able to flesh out a server in about 300 lines of js.

Ancy

By the way, this answer is meant to sound like "give it a try, you can do it" not like "whatever, that's easy." :) – Ancy

Well I found Haraka. It seems good but, it needs Mail Delivery Agent to send mails, furthermore my hosting service already provides good anti-spam protection, spf, etc, so I have decided to write a milter for sendmail in Python. – Pye

I 100% agree with the sentiment of this answer. Even if you decide to use a library (which is what I do), writing your own will help you to understand what's going on and is a very valuable exercise. It's not that hard. – Bustup

300 lines of code is not a measure. One can write those 300 lines for several days or even weeks. – Effrontery

Answer 4

Some answers here are quite outdated, so I'd like to offer the lastest.

There are currently three Node SMTP servers (libraries) I know of:

• Haraka (which has been mentioned and is quite robust/heavy)
• smtp-server (this is the successor to the deprecated Simple SMTP project)
• smtp-protocol

There's also mailin which is an SMTP server that receives messages and posts them to some URL for you to process. Mailin uses Python for some optional features.

Bustup

Is Haraka for sending or receiving emails? – Effrontery

@Effrontery Haraka is a mail transfer agent ("MTA"). Whether it's for "sending" or "receiving" really depends on where you are in the transaction. Have a look at Email_agent_(infrastructure) to get an idea of where an MTA fits in. – Bustup