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mailcow: dockerized

Dockerized full-stack mail server, a self-hosted Gmail alternative

13k PHP GPL-3.0 11 days ago

Overview

mailcow is a complete dockerized mail server suite bundling Postfix, Dovecot, Rspamd, ClamAV, and SOGo groupware with a polished admin UI. It provides webmail, calendars, contacts, multi-domain support, and antispam/antivirus out of the box. It is a leading self-hosted alternative to Gmail / Google Workspace for running your own mailboxes. Setup is via Docker Compose.

Where it falls short of Gmail / Google Workspace

  • Requires a dedicated server with proper DNS/PTR and good IP reputation
  • Not a bulk-newsletter tool — focused on mailboxes, not campaigns
  • Ongoing maintenance, updates, and spam tuning are on you
  • Resource-hungry; needs a few GB of RAM minimum

We list the gaps honestly so you can decide if the trade-off is worth owning your data.

Tags

mail-server
groupware
self-hosted
docker
webmail
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