If I'm making a mail system that manages large amounts of email would I be better off using james or Javamail

Question

I'm trying to decide whether to use James(http://james.apache.org/) or Javamail(http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/) to build a email system that takes and processes email. It will send and recieve email along with processing the content, checking for spam etc. What are the advantages/disadvantages of each and which do you recommend I should use. It must be compatible with either Java or Clojure.

Please feel free to make a case for an email system that I haven't mentioned here that is Java/Clojure compatible.

Answer 1

JavaMail is the low level Java Mail API that allows you to build mail applications and send mail.

James (on the other hand) is an extensible mail server that allows you to manage folders of mail, and permits custom Java plugins to process these. So I suspect James is a good starting point (you may still need JavaMail to actually send emails).

Answer 2

Here is a lightweight Clojure wrapper around an Apache Commons email library. Very simple but maybe it'll give you some ideas.

Answer 3

There is also http://code.google.com/p/subethasmtp/ which is a simple SMTP server library in Java.