Can't beat Mox: https://www.xmox.nl/
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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It's a bit unconventional maybe, but I vote simple-nixos-mailserver - IF you are curious / willing to learn nix. It's essentially just sanely configured dovecot, postfix, rspamd.
My config for those three combined is about 15 lines, and I have never had an issue with them. Slap on another 5-10 lines for Roundcube as a webmail client.
Since it's Nix, everything is declarative, so should SOMETHING happen to the server, you can be up and running again super quickly, with the exact same setup.
I use nixos on my desktop, the server is a debian one but might be good to install nix on it.
In that case I can really highly recommend it. Nixos on the server is fantastic anyways, and the only hurdle to recommending simple-nixos-mailserver is that most people are not familiar with nix... 😄
I have used mailinabox.email (I think there is a docker version of it) and am quite happy with it.
Mailcow is amazing.
Importing exporting i would just use any mailclient and drag-drop them over. Depending on how many Mailboxes you have to transfer.
I just have to import only one. Might just use thunderbird for that.
Will test out mailcow and see how it goes.
Another vote for Mailcow-dockerized. Used it for about 5 years now and never had a problem.
I've never messed with it but I've heard mail servers are a pain in the ass.
Extremely.
This has been said over and over again. I have been hosting Mail now for over 2 years and have yet to encounter any problems. Although, i would not recommend to set it up manually and rather advise to use one of the 'all in one' suggested solutions here in the thread.
Don't u need a static ipv4 or something? I looked into it a while back even got the point of deploying a docker container but the config was so awful I gave up.
It would be more reliable to use a 'clean' not blacklisted static IP.
But in theory you could just use ddns and update the IP. But I actually never tried it.
Mailcow comes ready out of the box. Just change the DNS entries according to Mailcow and you are good to go.
I've heard that using ddns for mail gets u into all sorts of IP blacklisting issues. I don't even have a non cgnat iv4 and I'm not sure if email can work with an ipv6 only
Yes thats why i said in theory. I doubt that many residential IPs are blacklisted, but still not optimal.
IPv6 only works but there are probably many Mail Servers that are IPv4 only, so you will not receive mails from them.
If you are serious about it, rent a VPS or get a static IP on your residential connection.
In theory you could use an smtp relay.
Which pulls the messages from the relay and also sends for you.
This way you won't have to fiddle around with IP reputation.
But you are still interacting with a cloud service...
Yeah, all the threads I came across when I looked into this were like "Self host everything! Except email" so I haven't looked into it.
Stalwart is gaining momentum. I haven't used it, but it's worth a look. https://stalw.art/
Looks amazing. But the dual licensing scares me. The open variant could be artificially limited in functionality or could end up basic abandon ware.
A project ending as abandonware is always a possibility. One reason projects get abandoned is losing funding, which can be secured by using dual licensing and selling some features to businesses.
They use AGPL so even if they broke their promise and restricted features, it could still be developed further (even if no new features got added). NGINX also uses a dual license.
A project ending as abandonware is always a possibility. One reason projects get abandoned is losing funding, which can be secured by using dual licensing and selling some features to businesses.
That is not my point.
Having a CE or OS version and an Enterprise Version can lead to conflict of interest. Do you add a feature to the OS Version or do you spend time on the Enterprise feature? There are a lot of examples, Emby is one, others are escaping me right now.
There are other models that work well like paid support etc. Nonetheless i will stay away.
I'm the same way. If it's split license, then it's a matter of when and not if it's going to have some MBA come along and enshittify it.
There's just way, way too much prior experience where that's what eventually will happen for me to be willing to trust any project that's doing that, since the split means they're going to monetize it, and then have all the incentive in the world to shit all over the "free" userbase to try to get them to convert.
This is probably the way, because a traditional "mail server" is actually 4-5 different servers working together.
- postfix for SMTP
- dovecot for IMAP
- amavis to plug in..
- spamassassin as anti spam
- clam-av as antivirus
And they can all be very easily misconfigured to break everything completely. Great learning experience though.
I've been using mailu for years without probelms
Same! Okay, not without problems, because running a mailserver isn't maintenance-free. But Mailu has been generally solid and it works with Docker. (And Podman, unofficially.)
I use OpenSMTPD for mail delivery, dovecot for IMAP, fdm for filtering and some tool I forget the name of for DKIM signing.
To bulk move mail around, just move the maildirs.
(Hosting email is a pain)
After 20+ years of hosting my email in a similar way (postfix...) I decoded to explore the "all in ones" like stalwart and mailcow.
Stalwart looks promising because its a new approach, supposedly more streamlined and efficient. Will post back in a few months.
I am not worried about stalwart dual license, the overall feeling seems to be of trust.
I was going to ask if anyone had experience with Maddy, which is an all-in-one solution I've been eyeballing for a while.
Getting DKIM and postfix set up correctly was such a PITA, and then dovecot, I'm nervous about having to go through all that again and fretting about accidentally configuring an open relay, so I haven't tried it yet. But it looks nice, and has been around for a couple of years.
I've been using Maddy for about a year. I haven't had any complaints, although my use case is very basic (running on bare metal, with just a handful of inboxes). DKIM is never pleasant but the Maddy configuration is straightforward enough.
Thank you. I may try it; postfix seems to give me grief ever other update, like they can't leave the damned config file alone.
https://mxtoolbox.com/ will help a lot with making sure you're configured correctly.
And look at Mailcow if you're nervous about setting up another server, it's bulletproof and mature.
I miss the old days, before you had to worry about spam.
I'm not OP, and I have everything set up fine now; Mailcow would replace what I currently have with the same software components, so I don't see any value there - for myself.
Something like Maddy is completely at odds with the Unix philosophy, and yet I've fought enough with postfix to dislike it enough to want to try an all-in-one. I dread the DKIM setup, though; that took so much time, and the mail server configuration wasn't the hard part. Maybe now I've got it configured for my domains, switching email server software will be easier.
Mailcow was effortless and I've never had to intervene in the stack. And after 20 years of fighting postfix and dovecot, that was a pleasant change. I can see why you'd want to try something different, but don't expect it to be easy.
fretting about accidentally configuring an open relay
That's easy enough to test. Try sending mail from the Internet to an address outside your domain, both from a real sender and a sender spoofing your own domain.
I have started testing out stalwart, seems pretty nice, bit way too early to give you reasonable feedback.
If you are looking for an innovative approach to email server stalwart is the new boss in town.
If you want proven and stable, mailcow might be your easy choice.
Both can be deployed with containers, I did with podman.
If only this wasn't asked 50 times in the past 7 days. SEARCH.
A forum is good for searches. Social media is good for blind repost and "me me me" posting.
That's life
So sad we abandoned the forum approach.