Disabling Mail services on OS X Server

You can customize which Mail services are running in the OS X Server. For example, you can disable POP if you want to use IMAP exclusively.

Server.app 3.1 and later include a global Mail Server service check. This check ensures all of the various services related to the Mail Server are running each time the Mail Server is started. To allow customization of the OS X Mail Server, you must disable this feature.

1. Use this Terminal command to disable the global service check that is performed when the Mail Service started

   sudo serveradmin settings mail:global:skip_enable_service_check = yes

2. Select the services you want to enable or disable. Any of the following services can be enabled (= yes) or disabled (= no) using the serveradmin command in the Terminal. By default, all are set to "yes".

   sudo serveradmin settings mail:postfix:enable_smtp = sudo serveradmin settings mail:postfix:enable_smtp_in = sudo serveradmin settings mail:postfix:enable_smtp_out = sudo serveradmin settings mail:imap:enable_imap = sudo serveradmin settings mail:imap:enable_pop = sudo serveradmin settings mail:imap:enable_sieve =

3. Stop the Mail Server and allow 30 seconds for the Mail Server to fully stop.

4. Start the Mail Server. The changes made above should take effect.

These settings can be reset to their default values if needed by setting each to "yes" or by setting skip_global_service_check to no. When the Mail Server is stopped and then started, the services are re-enabled if they are set to yes.