I personally like postfix for smtp. I prefer to use IMAP instead of POP3 for the sole reason that mail is stored on the server instead of the client. This makes administration and support easier cause you never get into those situations where you lose your laptop and all the mail with it. Anyway without going into great detail about my preferred mail setup I use imapd (wu-imap) over ssh. You may however, want to look at something a bit more mainstream like courier-imap. The configuration is quite easy. Hope that helps...