Postal
Complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers.
- Email Servers
- Ruby
- MIT
- Docker
- Actively maintained
GitHub stats
- GitHub stars
- 16,854
- Forks
- 1,302
- Open issues
- 51
- Commits, last 12 months
- 18
- Last commit
- Oct 1, 2026
- Latest release
- 3.3.7Jun 3, 2026
- Created
- Apr 19, 2017
Data from the GitHub API, refreshed daily.
About Postal
Complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers. Postal is open source under the MIT license and written mainly in Ruby, so you can read the code, run it on your own hardware and keep full control of your data.
The project has 16,854 stars and 1,302 forks on GitHub, with 18 commits over the last year. It ships a Docker image, which makes it a good fit for a small VPS or a home server running Docker Compose.
Topics
- ruby
- smtp
- postal
- mail-server
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What is Postal?
Postal is a free, open-source app you can host on your own server, listed in our Email Servers category. Complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers. The source code lives at github.com/postalserver/postal, where it has 16,854 stars.
Is Postal free and open source?
Yes. Postal is open-source software released under the MIT license, so you can self-host it at no cost. You only pay for the server it runs on, and some projects also offer an optional paid cloud plan.
Can I run Postal with Docker?
Yes. Postal provides a Docker image, so you can run it on any Linux server with Docker and Docker Compose installed. The project README lists the image name and the environment variables to set.
What are the best alternatives to Postal?
Popular open-source alternatives to Postal include docker-mailserver, Mail-in-a-Box and Stalwart Mail Server. Postal itself is a self-hosted alternative to Twilio SendGrid and Mailgun.
Is Postal actively maintained?
The most recent commit to Postal was on Oct 1, 2026 with 18 commits in the past twelve months. The latest release is 3.3.7, published Jun 3, 2026. Check the open issues on GitHub to gauge how quickly maintainers respond.