SmarterMail System Requirements

SmarterMail was designed to operate efficiently with multiple applications on the same server. Below are the minimum system requirements solely for SmarterMail. If SmarterMail is running on a server with other applications, those need to be taken into consideration and may add to the requirements listed below. In addition, high-load / high-volume servers may need to adjust the requirements as needed:

Supported Operating Systems

Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022, or higher
Ubuntu 20+ or Debian 11+
Docker with Docker Compose

Minimum Hardware Requirements

4GB RAM
2-core CPU
1GB disk space for installation, not including mail data, file storage, etc.
Dedicated IP address
Dedicated domain name (subwebs and/or virtual directories are not supported)
Active internet connection

Can SmarterMail Be Installed "In the Cloud"? (I.e., on Azure, Amazon AWS, etc.)

SmarterMail can be installed in the cloud or on your own dedicated hardware. When using a cloud service like Azure or Google Cloud, we recommend a full VM (e.g., Compute Engine on Google, which is extremely efficient when running SmarterMail for Linux) and not serverless installs (like Cloud Run or App Engine). This is because SmarterMail will use whatever hardware you give it for caching and performance, and services that dynamically scale automatically may cost you more money.

Services like Azure and Amazon's platforms, as well as other cloud providers, have some things to consider when determining how well any mail server will run. For example, some cloud services don't offer static IP addresses, instead rotating the IP addresses that are used. This can cause issues with items like DNS records, (MX records, A records, etc.) and affect mail delivery. As such, a static, public IP address is required for any mail server running in the cloud.

In addition, some providers lock down the ports necessary to run a mail server in order to prevent spamming. Check to ensure you can get permission to allow Port 25 as most don't allow it by defult. However, legitimate customers can bypass this restriction for their accounts, though it may take some time.

Note: Each installation and environment is unique. Extra load caused by excessive messages or email accounts and/or other factors may require more disk space, memory, CPUs and/or CPU cores, database allocation, etc. SmarterTools recommends that system administrators slowly add domains to the server and watch how they impact the server. In addition, email patterns indicate that the number of email messages per account are increasing by approximately 60% every two years. It is important to keep this growth in mind when planning your rollout.