Personal Mail server
Go to file
2024-05-24 22:10:43 -04:00
deploy_configs Improve cert_copy script to work better for the first time 2024-04-01 18:11:38 -04:00
mail4one Add X-SSL header to email 2024-05-24 22:00:28 -04:00
scripts Remove type information files from executable 2024-01-12 10:48:17 -05:00
tests Add X-SSL header to email 2024-05-24 22:00:28 -04:00
.gitignore reorg files 2023-06-28 17:15:18 -04:00
DEVNOTES.md add devnotes 2024-05-24 22:09:31 -04:00
LICENSE Add LICENSE 2018-12-18 17:12:08 +00:00
Makefile add test target 2024-04-16 18:14:09 -04:00
Pipfile add jata 2023-05-12 16:49:51 -04:00
Pipfile.lock update deps 2024-05-24 22:10:43 -04:00
README.md Improve readme doc 2024-01-09 11:25:42 -05:00
requirements.txt update deps 2024-05-24 22:10:43 -04:00

Mail4one

Personal mail server for a single user or a small family. Written in pure python with minimal dependencies. Designed for dynamic alias based workflow where a different alias is used for each purpose.

Getting started

  1. Get a domain name
  2. Get a VPS (or a home server). Setup firewall rules for receive on port 25, 995, 465
  3. Setup MX record
  4. Build / Download latest release - mail4one.pyz
  5. Generate config.json from config.sample
  6. Run ./mail4one.pyz -c config.json
  7. Setup systemd service and TLS certificates. See deploy_configs for examples

Sending email

Mail4one only takes care of receiving and serving email. For sending email, use an external service like below

Most of them have generous free tier which is more than enough for personal use.

Sending email is tricky. Even if everything is correctly setup (DMARC, DKIM, SPF), popular email vendors like google, microsoft may mark emails sent from your IP as spam for no reason. Hence using a dedicated service is the only reliable way to send emails.

Community

Original source is at https://gitea.balki.me/balki/mail4one

For issues, pull requests, discussions, please use github mirror: https://github.com/mail4one/mail4one

Documentation

See files under deploy_configs for configuring and deploying to a standard systemd based linux system (e.g. debian, ubuntu, fedora, archlinux etc). config.sample has inline comments for more details. Feel free create github issue/discussions for support.

DNS Records (Receiving)

If you want to receive email for john@example.com and your VPS IP address is 1.2.3.4. Following record needs to be created

Type Name Target Notes
A mail.example.com 1.2.3.4
AAAA mail.example.com abcd:1234::1234::1 Optional, add if available
MX example.com mail.example.com
MX sub.example.com mail.example.com Optional, to receive emails like foo@sub.example.com

For sending emails DMARC, DKIM and SPF records need to be set. Please refer to email sending provider for details.

Building from source

Make sure to have make, git, python >= 3.9, and pip installed in your system and run below

make build

This should generate mail4one.pyz in current folder. This is a executable python archive. Should be runnable as ./mail4one.pyz or as python3 mail4one.pyz.

Roadmap (Planned features for future)

  • Other ways to install and update (PIP, AUR, docker etc)
  • Write dedicated documentation
  • Test with more email clients (Thunderbird and k9mail are tested now)
  • IMAP support
  • Web UI for editing config (WIP)
  • Support email submission from client to forward to other senders or direct delivery
  • Optional SPAM filtering
  • Optional DMARC,SPF,DKIM verification
  • Webmail Client
  • Web UI to view graphs and smart reports