I was kinda lacking in information as I worked as a mail server admin in 2012ish era. I know about Zimbra but it is too much memory-hungry mail server. I am looking for the best alternative for Zimbra. previously there were qmail and vpopmail etc. but I always liked Zimbra also Zimbra is kinda free@minimum-like stuff if we need to go for advanced configurations eg. Zimbra network. so what do we have in our hands as an alternative to Zimbra without such limitations in self-hosted families must be open source?
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please clarify: Be more specific on which features you need, and which anti-features you don't want. It is not really helpful to point to a specific product and say "like that" because it is too vague which features of "that" you appreciate and which you don't care about.– JonasCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 11:34
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I am hard about the email filter appliance but I am not sure. SpamAssassin and ClamAV both used to be popular. so postfix, dovecot, SpamAssassin, LDAP, and vpopmail to allow aliasing outside the registered domain? Zimbra specifically doesn't allow aliasing outside the domain etc.– CADENTICCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 13:20
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@Jonas any alternative to email filter appliances or SpamAssassin and clamAV would be enough?– CADENTICCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 14:29
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If you mean that what you need must include vpopmail (not any other message delivery agent) then please update your question to explicitly include that restriction. Same for other constraints you have: make them explicit in your question.– JonasCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 14:50
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Also, if you are not looking for a list of pieces to put together, but instead it must be a turn-key solution, then write that explicitly. It is unclear in your current text why exactly you mention Zimbra. Due to its licensing? Its popularity? Your familiarity with it? Its tighte integration? Its breadth of functionality? The ease of use of its administration interface? Its color? The hair color of its authors?– JonasCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 14:53
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2 Answers
An "email-server" is typically multiple things, including a message transfer agent (MTA), some filters (e.g. against spam), a message delivery agent (MDA) and a mailbox access service (POP3 or IMAP).
The best email-server in 2022 is the same as the best in 2012 - this combo:
Postfix as MTA, and Dovecot for the other parts (Sieve filter, dovecot-lda for delivery, and IMAP and optionally POP3 service).
Add to that spam-scanners providing hints for the filter to work with, where spamassasin is the old battle-tested one, and rspamd is the newer alternative. Which you prefer likely depends on whether you trust yourself to sensibly maintain a training corpus (then pick rspamd which heavily depends on bayesian filter) or if you want the freedom to avoid that (then stick to spamassasin mainly defined by static rules with bayesian filters as an afterthought).
Maybe sprinkle a webmail service on top. Too many to choose from - I guess Roundcube is still a popular choice (but personally I distrust PHP code and go for the much lesser known CiderWebmail written in Perl).
If you need CarlDAV and CardDAV services as well, then I recommend Radicale for that. Sadly it will not be tightly integrated with the email flow - no good Free Software solutions exist for that yet.
If what you are looking for is a turnkey solution, and if you happen to prefer something self-hosted and privacy-oiented, then the Freedombox might appeal to you.
Freedombox is an appliance running Debian, aiming to provide a set of services for non-technical users to self-host.
The email service in Freedombox is still young: it was considered production quality since v22.6 released March 2022.
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Other turnkey solutions exist for self-hosted Free Software email services, most notably yunohost - they offer more functionality and a richer administration interface, but the core functionalities are less tightly maintained than the pure Debian core of Freedombox.– JonasCommented Mar 2, 2022 at 15:09