A mail server is a software package that regulate sending and receiving emails using email protocols over the internet.  

Mostly, we are using several email services like Gmail, Outlook and ProtonMail. However, enterprise often require using their infrastructure services.

Many users and companies tend to have their mail servers to own  and maintain their data and keep everything in their control.

Some users may look for an open-source self-hosted webmail client, for those, we got you covered with this list: Top 15 Self-hosted open-source free webmail clients.

Self-hosted Open-source Mail servers can be used as a base for email marketing solutions. However, some email marketing solutions have integrated mail servers and others work well with other mail server. Therefore, you can read our article: 12 open-source free self-hosted email marketing solutions.

Mail servers also perform a great rule with many groupware solutions, here you can check the 13 Top Open-source Groupware solutions, as most of them work seamlessly with self-hosted mail servers.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

In this article, we collected the most active and usable open-source mail servers for enterprise and personal use. By the way, If you want to read more articles about development, you can visit Thoughtsoncloud.

Open-source email servers for enterprise and personal use

1- iRedMail



iRedMail is a free open-source popular mail server package. It has a great portion of open-source email servers running online. It runs on Linux servers like Red Hat, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

iRedMail uses secure connections with full support for POP3, IMAP, SMTP. Emails are encrypted using TLS.

It features a web client and supports external webmail clients like RoundCube WebMail app. It also helps users to manage calendars (CalDav), address books (CardDav).

Server admins can choose their favorite database store backend like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and OpenLDAP.

Furthermore, iRedMail has a built-in antispam and antivirus support with third-party extensions like SpamAssassin, ClamAV, SPF and DKIM.  All features and configurations are easy to control through a web admin panel, but it comes in two versions a free open-source community version and a Pro version.

iRedMail: an Open-source Mail Server for enterprise
iRedMail is a complete open-source mail suite that include a mail server, and a webmail client. It is built for enterprise use as it support Calendars management and sync, Contact Sync ActiveSync, CalDav and CardDav and more. iRedMail plays well with the popular webmail client and groupware: SOGo G…

2- hMailServer

hMailServer is our second open-source mail server pick, it is a full-featured email server with similar features like iRedMail, but it works only for Windows Servers.

hMailServer supports the common email protocols (IMAP, SMTP and POP3). It offers a spam protection with 3rd party anti-spamming systems like ASSP and SpamAssassin.
Webmail clients like RoundCube and SquirrelMail are completely supported with hMailServer.

hMailServer: Open-source Mail server for Windows systems
Mail Servers is a software which handles incoming and outgoing mail messages. It often uses SMTP protocol to send and handle outgoing messages and IMAP and POP3 protocols to receive messages. Although, we have a dozen of open-source mail servers for Linux servers, we don’t have enough mail server p…

3- Postal

Postal is a complete Libre free mail server for enterprise. It is the open-source competitor for SendGrid, Mailgun and Postmark.

Postal supports all known protocols, comes integrated with spam and virus protection. It offers a developer-friendly API.

If you want to know all Postal mail server features, we got you covered with a snap review for it here.

Postal free Open-source Mail Server for Enterprise
Postal is free Libre mail server for enterprise. It is the open-source equivalent and competitor for Mailgun, SendGrid, and Postmark. Postal mail server is an ideal solution for enterprise, companies which require to have their mail server for privacy, security or cost reasons. It comes with a fan…
GitHub - postalserver/postal: ✉️ A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & outgoing e-mail
✉️ A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & outgoing e-mail - GitHub - postalserver/postal: ✉️ A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & o…

4- James

James is an enterprise-specific open-source mail server that built as a cross-platform system with Java and Scala.

It supports all popular email protocols like SMTP, LMTP, POP3, and IMAP, with ManageSieve, JMAP protocols as well.

James offers 3 ways to administrate the system: REST, JMX and Command Line. It offers different options for storage which include: Cassandra DB, MySQL, MariaDB, HSQLDB and Elasticsearch.

GitHub - apache/james-project: Emails at the heart of your business logic!
Emails at the heart of your business logic! Contribute to apache/james-project development by creating an account on GitHub.

5- Haraka

Haraka is an open-source SMTP server built with Node.js. It is highly scalable, extensible through plugins.

Haraka runs seamlessly on Windows and Linux servers, and it requires minimal configuration.

Haraka SMTP Email Server
Haraka is an open source SMTP server written in Node.js. Haraka is fast, scalable, and extensible.

6- Modoboa

Modoboa is a free open-source easy-to-install email server and engine for enterprise. It has what takes to create a fully functional email server similar to commercial services.

It supports multiple domains per single setup, calendar management, address book manager, long list of administration tools that includes monitoring, real-time statistics, security configuration, users and permission manager.  It also comes with a webmail client and multilingual support.

Modoboa
Modoboa is an open source email server including a modern and simplified Web User Interface.

7- DOVECOT

DOVECOT is a minimal open-source IMAP and POP3 email server for Linux/ Unix operating systems. It supports different authentication methods, requires minimal memory, supports Postfix and Exim and offers free migrations from other email servers.

DOVECOT features include shared mailboxes with a dozen of other features.

Dovecot | The Secure IMAP server

8- MailSlurper

Yet another SMTP mail server for teams and software development. MailSlurper is a lightweight package for personal use or software developers who want to write email-centric applications.  

It features a responsive web-based admin panel, email attachments, SSL support, basic user authentications and runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

About | MailSlurper

9- WildDuck

An open-source mail server for IMAP and POP3. WildDuck supports large numbers of emails with configurable large quotes because it scales horizontally.

It offers two and multifactor authentications and released as an open-source under European Union Public License.

WildDuck is built on top of Node.js, Redis and MongoDB.

WildDuck Mail Server – Self hosted modern mail server

10- Cuttlefish

If you are looking for an enterprise freshly developed mail server, then Cuttlefish mail server is a great option. It comes with all required infrastructure to run a seamless email server with a fancy well-designed web email client and web admin dashboard.

Cuttlefish requires Ruby, PostgreSQL, Redis and Postfix.

GitHub - mlandauer/cuttlefish: Transactional email server with a lovely web interface
Transactional email server with a lovely web interface - GitHub - mlandauer/cuttlefish: Transactional email server with a lovely web interface

11- Cyrus Mail Server

Cyrus IMAP is a free open-source email, contacts and calendar server that offers speed, security, and support for dozens of protocols and authentication methods.

It is a rich configurable mail-server with a large set of options and third-party integrations.

Cyrus is recommended for enterprise and companies which offers emails to their customers.

What is Cyrus IMAP? — Cyrus IMAP 3.8.0 documentation

12- Mailu

Mailu is a lightweight but features-rich email server with minimal setup thanks to its Docker image.

Mailu features IMAP, IMAP+, SMTP support, webmail access, multiple admins, quote configuration and forces TLS for external integration. Furthermore, Mailu offers a built-in antivirus scanner and several antispam methods that include external services.

GitHub - Mailu/Mailu: Insular email distribution - mail server as Docker images
Insular email distribution - mail server as Docker images - GitHub - Mailu/Mailu: Insular email distribution - mail server as Docker images

13- Mail-in-a-Box

Mail-in-a-Box is a small minimal mail server package for individuals to help maintain their privacy.  It is easy-to-deploy as described by its developers and supports SMTP (postfix), IMAP (Devecot), CardDAV/ CalDAV, and Exchange ActiveSync servers.

Moreover, Mail-in-a-Box has antispam features, backup options, plays well with Linux firewall (UFW). It also comes with a dozen of security-focused features.

Mail-in-a-Box works well with webmail like Roundcube, address book clients like Nextcloud contact clients and offers a well-designed easy-to-use control panel.

GitHub - mail-in-a-box/mailinabox: Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.
Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box. - GitHub - mail-in-a-box/mailinabox: Ma…

14- Salmon

Salmon is a free open-source mail server for developers who wish to create a robust and complex server-based mail applications.

It is released under GNU GPLv3 and works seamlessly with Python web frameworks and libraries like Django and SQLAlchemy.

Salmon - A Python Mail Server — Salmon 3.2.0+28.gaa4416b documentation

15- Open Trashmail

Open Trashmail is a lightweight trash mail solution for personal users. It comes with a simple web-based email client and Python-powered mail-server backend.

Unlike other heavy-duty mail servers on this list, Open Trashmail does not use any database, rather it uses flat-files for storage.

GitHub - HaschekSolutions/opentrashmail: Open Source standalone trashmail solution that ships its own mail server
Open Source standalone trashmail solution that ships its own mail server - GitHub - HaschekSolutions/opentrashmail: Open Source standalone trashmail solution that ships its own mail server

16- MailCatcher

MailCatcher is a free tiny SMTP mail server for personal usage with a simple web-based mail client. It supports both text and HTML message version, large file attachments, command-line options to override the default SMTP/HTTP and port settings.

MailCatcher

17- Neuron Mail Server

Neutron Mail server is an open-source mail server built with Go programming language for ProtonMail client.

It has binary packages for Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora Linux distros.

Neutron: A Libre Mail server for Proton Webmail client
Neutron is a self-hosted IMAP and SMTP mail server for ProtonMail client. ProtonMail is an open-source webmail client distributed and licensed under GNU “General Public License” version 3. Neutron Mail server features: 1. IMAP support: reads and stores all messages on server. 2. SMTP support:…

18- Magama Mail Server

The Magama is an open-source mail server for CentOS. It is a low-level app that requires certain development skills to install and run.

Magama: Open-source mail server for Linux
The Magama is an open-source mail-server application daemon for SMTP, POP, IMAP, HTTP, and MOLETN. It offers additional support for DMTP and DMAP. Magama features webmail with JSON-RPC interface, which requires some work to install. Supported protocols 1. SMTP 2. POP 3. IMAP 4. HTTP 5. MOL…

19- Inbucket: A disposable Webmail Server

Inbucket: A disposable Webmail Server
InBucket app is a free, open-source disposable mail server that works without any database. InBucket supports many email protocols without depending on external dependenc

Conclusion

As our list came to an end, we have to say that we listed the most updated and usable ones and excluded the old, obsolete and abandoned projects. We hope this list will be useful for anyone looking to run his private email server.

If you think we missed any open-source email server project that need to be on this list, please let us know.  

10 Greatest Open-Source Email clients for macOS [2021]
An email client software is as its name implies; A way of retrieving your mail from your provider’s servers and downloads it to your computer’s hard drive; Once the client has retrieved your email, you can read it at your convenience and continue to access it even when you are