Also, the idea behind Mailu is based on the work by folks from Poste.io. If free software is not the reason you chose Mailu or if you are seeking long-term professional support, you should probably turn to them instead.
I’ve found it really good. I’ve blatted and rebuilt boxes several times and done a ton of upgrades from god knows how long ago. The only issues I’ve had have been with running other things on the same box behind the same server, but my setup was originally from a pre-1.0 version.
If I was starting from scratch I’d probably go with mailcow, but I’m not and it works, so I’m sticking with it.
I keep their docker-compose template around so I can diff it against my version, and redo my changes to their new template, and that works pretty well. not seamless, but reasonable, at least for a simple config (my personal server).
For the other host where I integrated mailman3 into mailu (mail.coreboot.org), things are more complicated, but that’s unavoidable with this architecture (loosely coupled components and their config files managed by an overlay project)
Also no source available as far as I can see, only a Bitbucket page with an issue tracker. Rather hard to see what exactly is being set up like this :-/
Unpopular opinion puffin meme: I really dislike that Docker is required, given that Docker is a form of open source vendor lock-in. I’m unable to use this solution due to Docker not being available/supported on the BSDs and I refuse to use Linux.
Granted, I don’t have an actual use case, but it still irks me that peeps made deliberate choices that prevent me from using and contributing to their solution.
Run Docker in QEMU? :-) Only half-joking, because the way Docker is ported to Windows and macOS is by running Linux inside a VM.
I don’t care so much about stuff like this. I mean, can just run Postfix, Dovecot, etc. yourself and you don’t need this container. The annoying things are stuff like test runners that will only run with Docker :-(
Nah, Windows supports docker natively on server. Desktop requires VM but in next release this is gone too, at leaast for linux containers as linux kernal will be included side by side with windows kernel.
Aren’t there tools that could convert docker images to a BSD Jail-compatible format? They probably wouldn’t handle all the advanced use-cases but I can envision something like this working for 80% of the cases.
They also provide paid versions and from looking at it (quickly) they’re completely relying on open source but trying to hide how they run things somehow.
The Docker Hub source repository is hosted on Bitbucket but only issues are enabled, no actual repository. Given that there are a lot of other solutions available like mailinabox or mailcow which are completely developed on GitHub with the community I’d prefer them.
I’ve been running mailcow for over a year now, it’s also using docker but every service is running in it’s own container. So far I like it and haven’t had any issues.
I must admit I wrote this response after a cursory glance at the page and seeing “powered by open source” figuring it would have a dual-licensed model or similar. I’m very disappointed there’s no code/it’s not open source since I was hoping to be able to hack on it and improve upon it for my own personal use/learning. Not only that but for them to be claiming about relying on open source but not releasing any is quite dishonest in my opinion!
Thanks for the heads up about mailcow though, I’ll definitely give that a look.
There are quite a lot of these now, one thing I was looking for on the main page and didn’t see is how it is better than the existing email-in-a-box solutions.
The use of Haraka (which I didn’t know about before this) instead of Postfix is a curious choice, given how flexible and secure Postfix has proven to be.
The use of Haraka (which I didn’t know about before this) instead of Postfix is a curious choice, given how flexible and secure Postfix has proven to be.
Why go with the robust software that has proven itself over the last 20 years when you can use this kewl hip new NodeJS server?
Stop living in the past. Shave off your Unix beard and accept the future!
The use of Haraka (which I didn’t know about before this) instead of Postfix is a curious choice, given how flexible and secure Postfix has proven to be.
Not an expert in Postfix but I’ve used Haraka to write a mailing list software (similar to sr.ht), it’s incredibly powerful and has plugins for programmatic access to many e-mail stats. Maybe they were targeting ease of development? (I don’t know anything about Postfix though…)
From their pricing page:
No thanks, I’ll stick with mailu.
According to https://mailu.io/1.6/setup.html
But yes, that was a turn off for me too.
Interesting, I didn’t notice that before. Thanks for pointing it out.
Have you had a good experience with mailu? In particular, how’s the upgrade experience across major versions?
I’ve found it really good. I’ve blatted and rebuilt boxes several times and done a ton of upgrades from god knows how long ago. The only issues I’ve had have been with running other things on the same box behind the same server, but my setup was originally from a pre-1.0 version.
If I was starting from scratch I’d probably go with mailcow, but I’m not and it works, so I’m sticking with it.
I keep their docker-compose template around so I can diff it against my version, and redo my changes to their new template, and that works pretty well. not seamless, but reasonable, at least for a simple config (my personal server).
For the other host where I integrated mailman3 into mailu (mail.coreboot.org), things are more complicated, but that’s unavoidable with this architecture (loosely coupled components and their config files managed by an overlay project)
Also no source available as far as I can see, only a Bitbucket page with an issue tracker. Rather hard to see what exactly is being set up like this :-/
Unpopular opinion puffin meme: I really dislike that Docker is required, given that Docker is a form of open source vendor lock-in. I’m unable to use this solution due to Docker not being available/supported on the BSDs and I refuse to use Linux.
Granted, I don’t have an actual use case, but it still irks me that peeps made deliberate choices that prevent me from using and contributing to their solution.
Run Docker in QEMU? :-) Only half-joking, because the way Docker is ported to Windows and macOS is by running Linux inside a VM.
I don’t care so much about stuff like this. I mean, can just run Postfix, Dovecot, etc. yourself and you don’t need this container. The annoying things are stuff like test runners that will only run with Docker :-(
Nah, Windows supports docker natively on server. Desktop requires VM but in next release this is gone too, at leaast for linux containers as linux kernal will be included side by side with windows kernel.
Aren’t there tools that could convert docker images to a BSD Jail-compatible format? They probably wouldn’t handle all the advanced use-cases but I can envision something like this working for 80% of the cases.
I’m sure I’ve seen something like it. But really, you’d want the Docker tooling running and using jails as the “filesystem” driver.
There are number of similar solutions using configuration management tools such as Ansible.
Seeing the negative comments I personally mailcow-dockerized and consider it to be a very good alternative. https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized
This seems to be exactly what I’ve been looking for lately. Does anyone have any input regarding security/deliverability of this project?
They also provide paid versions and from looking at it (quickly) they’re completely relying on open source but trying to hide how they run things somehow.
The Docker Hub source repository is hosted on Bitbucket but only issues are enabled, no actual repository. Given that there are a lot of other solutions available like mailinabox or mailcow which are completely developed on GitHub with the community I’d prefer them.
I’ve been running mailcow for over a year now, it’s also using docker but every service is running in it’s own container. So far I like it and haven’t had any issues.
I must admit I wrote this response after a cursory glance at the page and seeing “powered by open source” figuring it would have a dual-licensed model or similar. I’m very disappointed there’s no code/it’s not open source since I was hoping to be able to hack on it and improve upon it for my own personal use/learning. Not only that but for them to be claiming about relying on open source but not releasing any is quite dishonest in my opinion!
Thanks for the heads up about mailcow though, I’ll definitely give that a look.
There are quite a lot of these now, one thing I was looking for on the main page and didn’t see is how it is better than the existing email-in-a-box solutions.
The use of Haraka (which I didn’t know about before this) instead of Postfix is a curious choice, given how flexible and secure Postfix has proven to be.
Why go with the robust software that has proven itself over the last 20 years when you can use this kewl hip new NodeJS server?
Stop living in the past. Shave off your Unix beard and accept the future!
Not an expert in Postfix but I’ve used Haraka to write a mailing list software (similar to sr.ht), it’s incredibly powerful and has plugins for programmatic access to many e-mail stats. Maybe they were targeting ease of development? (I don’t know anything about Postfix though…)
https://mailinabox.email/ has always been good to me.
Not to be confused with Posteo.