The Courier mail transfer agent (MTA) is an integrated mail/groupware server based on open commodity protocols, such as ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP, SSL, and HTTP. Courier provides ESMTP, IMAP, POP3, webmail, and mailing list services within a single, consistent, framework. Individual components can be enabled or disabled at will. The Courier mail server now implements basic web-based calendaring and scheduling services integrated in the webmail module. Advanced groupware calendaring services will follow soon.
The Courier mail server's source code should compile on most POSIX-based operating systems based on Linux, and BSD-derived kernels. The Courier mail server should also compile on Solaris and AIX, with some help from Sun's or IBM's freeware add-on tools for their respective operating systems.
The Courier mail server evolved out of several related projects, that merged together (more on that later). The Courier mail server implements SMTP extensions for mailing list management.