ActiveCampaign
Email marketing and CRM platform for customer experience automation
Postal
Self‑hosted mail server for inbound and outbound email.
Postal delivers a complete, self‑hosted email solution for sending and receiving messages, offering Docker deployment, extensive docs, and community support under an MIT license.
Overview
Highlights
Handles inbound and outbound email at scale
Self‑hosted deployment via Docker or native Ruby
Extensive documentation and CLI tools
Active community support through GitHub and Discord
Pros
- Open source MIT license eliminates vendor lock‑in
- Cost‑effective compared to SaaS email providers
- Strong community and documentation
- Flexible deployment options
Considerations
- Requires own server infrastructure and maintenance
- Ruby runtime may be unfamiliar to some teams
- No official commercial support tier
- Scaling may need additional expertise
Managed products teams compare with
When teams consider Postal, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Fit guide
Great for
- Startups needing custom email infrastructure
- Developers wanting on‑premise mail handling
- Organizations with strict data‑privacy requirements
- Teams preferring self‑hosted alternatives to SaaS
Not ideal when
- Small hobby projects lacking ops resources
- Users who prefer fully managed email services
- Environments where Ruby is prohibited
- Projects requiring built‑in AI email features
How teams use it
Transactional email for web applications
Reliable delivery of password resets, order confirmations, and notifications without third‑party fees.
Inbound email processing for support tickets
Receive and route customer emails directly into internal ticketing systems.
Bulk marketing campaigns for e‑commerce
Send newsletters to large subscriber lists while maintaining deliverability metrics.
Email compliance archiving for regulated industries
Store inbound and outbound messages on‑premise to meet data‑privacy and audit requirements.
Tech snapshot
Ruby75%
Haml16%
SCSS6%
CoffeeScript1%
HTML1%
Shell1%
Frequently asked questions
What programming language is Postal written in?
Postal is primarily written in Ruby.
Under which license is Postal released?
Postal is released under the MIT license.
How can I get help with Postal?
Support is available via GitHub Discussions and the project's Discord community.
Is Docker support provided?
Yes, the repository includes Dockerfiles for containerized deployment.
Where can I find installation instructions?
Detailed installation guides are included in the project's documentation.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 16,216
- Watchers
- 16,216
- Forks
- 1,195
LicenseMIT
Repo age8 years old
Last commit3 weeks ago
Primary languageRuby
Last synced 12 hours ago