Email and newsletters

Fastmail alternatives

2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.

The full assessment →

The projects

mail-in-a-box/mailinabox15,383CC0-1.0One‑click deployable personal mail server with SMTP, IMAP, DNS setup and basic web admin/webmail.Open on GitHub Mailu/Mailu7,438licence unclearDockerized full mail server suite with SMTP/IMAP, web admin, and webmail integrations for multi‑domain hosting.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

24/7 expert support from real people
Masked Email (built-in disposable address management)
Years of production-hardened reliability and backups at scale
Polished native mobile apps and cross-device client polishing
Integrated paid multi-user admin features and family plans

An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Fastmail, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.