Mailcow: Mailserver suite with the 'moo'
Mailcow is a self-hosted email tool. The mailserver suite with the ‘moo’.
Why self-host Mailcow
Self-hosting Mailcow removes the dependency on a third-party service. For anyone who values data ownership, that matters more than convenience in the long run.
What it does
Mailcow falls into the Email category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 8k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Getting Mailcow running usually takes under an hour if you have a working Docker setup. The official documentation covers the basic deployment steps.
Alternatives
If Mailcow does not fit your needs, common alternatives include Gmail, Microsoft Outlook. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.
Maturity
The current release is 2024-06c. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It is licensed under GPL-3.0, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
Whether you are just starting with self-hosting or adding to an existing setup, Mailcow is a reasonable pick in the email space.