Item: Email Server
Author: Vinnie

Best Free Self Hosted Email Server with ActiveSync

Running email sever is not the easiest thing to do, as it involves many components like SMTP, DNS, Email Client, SPF, DKIM, deliverability issues but sometimes its nice as you can purchase a domain name or leverage the domain you already have and create whatever email address you want. Its nice to have complete privacy over your emails, as leveraging free email servers they have full access to view all your emails.

One of the main feature I look in a email server is the ability to do push notifications, have a good admin/user interface and be easy to install and upgrade.

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Email Servers

Vendor	Push Notifications	Cost
Axigen	No	Free for 5 Users
iRedMail	No	Free Unlimited
Modoboa	No	Free Unlimited
Mailu	No	Free Unlimited
Zimbra	No	Open source version free
Kopano	Yes	Free for 5 Users
mailcow	Yes	Free Unlimited

Mailcow

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Easy
Admin Interface: Great
User Interface: Great
Push Notifications: Yes

Easy to setup a hot standby server for redundancy.
Only issue is that it runs in docker which creates lots of file bloat but its worth it as the docker makes it very easy to upgrade.

Axigen

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Easy
Admin Interface: Great
User Interface: Great
Push Notifications: No, unless you purchase 10 user license

Great server for up to 5 users, however lacks ActiveSync unless you purchase 10 user license which is about $500 a year.

Modoboa

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Easy
Admin Interface: Good
Push Notifications: No

Mailu

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Easy
Admin Interface: Good, limited settings
User Interface: Ok, not pretty
Push Notifications: No

iRedMail

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Hard
Admin Interface: Not good unless you upgrade to their Pro Version
Push Notifications: No

Kopano

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Medium
Admin Interface: Decent
Push Notifications: Yes

Zimbra

Easy of Install/Upgrade: Hard
Admin Interface: Decent
User Interface: Ok, not pretty
Push Notifications: No

I used to run Zimbra Open Source Edition but then they would not upgrade their version to the newer version as their paid one. Upgrades and maintenance required lots of cli commands. Also they lack lots of features that others have already built in.

Email Deliverability Issues

If your running a email server from your house, all our emails will end up in spam folder because you won’t be able to setup a DNS PTR record to point your email server name to your public IP.
So if you want to run a email server at your home but want to be able to send email to folks inbox, you need use a “Smart Host” which is just a SMTP server. My recommendation is to use smtp2go.com, they have good prices and a good user interface, and best of all its free for up to 1,000 emails per month, you just need a “business” email which you can setup through your email server.

SMTP2GO Pricing

1,000 emails/month free
10,000 emails/month for $10.00/mo
40,000 emails/month for $15.00/mo

There are other options out there like Amazon SES, but I have not used it but I heard its pretty cheap. However I try to avoid use the large tech companies due to principle.

Test Email Deliverability

Here are some websites to test your email server, sending receiving. You should test before start using the domains you setup.

Winner

Mailcow is best free email server with all the features you need and without costing a dime, allows unlimited users, has built in ActiveSync(Z-Push) and is super easy to install and upgrade. I do recommend at least sign up for their Stay-Awesome-License (SAL), which is a donation to them.