Mox vs Postal
| Tagline | Complete, modern self-hosted email server with JMAP, DANE, and built-in junk filtering | Self-hosted mail delivery platform, a SendGrid/Mailgun alternative |
| Category | Email & Newsletters | Email & Newsletters |
| Replaces | Gmail / Google Workspace, SendGrid, Mailchimp | SendGrid |
| GitHub stars | 5.7k | 17k |
| Language | Go | Ruby |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 4/5 Involved |
| Deploy options | Manual | Docker Docker Compose Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 11 days ago | 9 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Mox
- No Docker image provided officially; manual binary deployment only
- Not designed for high-volume transactional or bulk email sending
- Admin UI and webmail are functional but lack polish compared to hosted solutions
- Relatively young project; some edge-case RFC compliance gaps may exist
Postal
- You are responsible for IP reputation, warmup, and deliverability
- Requires MariaDB, RabbitMQ, and DNS/DKIM configuration to run
- No marketing-campaign UI — it is a delivery engine, not a newsletter builder
- Less hand-holding than managed providers for spam/blocklist issues
Bottom line
Choose Mox if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Postal for the larger community and ecosystem. Postal has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Mox
Complete, modern self-hosted email server with JMAP, DANE, and built-in junk filtering