Dovecot developers primarily aim to produce a lightweight, fast and easy-to-set-up open-source email server. The primary purpose of Dovecot is to act as mail storage server. Mail is delivered to the server using some mail delivery agent (MDA) and stored for later access with an email client (mail user agent, or MUA).

How does Dovecot store mail?

Dovecot currently supports maildir and mbox formats. ... Maildir mails are almost always stored in ~/Maildir/ directory, which contains cur/, new/ and tmp/ subdirectories. In maildir each mail is stored in a separate file, while with the mbox format one file contains all mails in the mailbox.

What is Dovecot MDA?

An MDA is being passed messages from an MTA and delivers it to a real or virtual mailbox. Common choices include: maildrop. procmail (appears to be unmaintained)