Recommendation of a Mailserver for veeeeery simple usecase

S

SvenTej

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Proxmox Subscriber
Sep 11, 2025
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Germany
Hey there,
honestly spoken I am fairly new to proxmox and linus, so please be not annoyed by simple questions.

Background:
Currenty I run hMailSever on a Windows Server to do only one thing: Act as a local mail archive.
I installed it with no external mail provider.
It only provides an e-mail address that is accessed locally via IMAP and where we place the mails we want to keep.
The database is included in our backup routine.

Now the quesrion to the pros here:
What would be a recommendation fpor proxmox to do this easy job?
Target should be:
- mail address that is accessible locally via IMAP
- make the config and datastore available via SMB for backup purposes

Is this possible for a complete newbie like my?

Thanks
Sven
 
Hey thanks for the recommendation.
Honestly spoken I never heard of them.

Are they okay to use in a pdoduction environment?

Any hints for Mailcow? Dovecot? iRedMail?
Or are they too overloaded for my simple purpose?
Sven
 
People have used them in production, yes.
However, you asked for a 'veeeeery simple usecase' and I thought they met the requirement.
It's also the reason I desisted from recommending others.

Between Mailcow and iRedMail, I'd recommend Mailcow because the free version of iRedMail is too limited when it comes to managing it. Besides that, it also install so many apps allover the place (on the file system).
Mailcow runs in Docker and I found it a lot easier to install and manage and use. For your use case, it's probably an overkill.
Now that I think about it, Dovecot would be the simplest to install and use, if you authenticate with system accounts.
The only reason my mind went to Mox and Stalwart was because you said you run hmailserver (I do run it in production for a client, BTW).

So, with Dovecot, it will be a simple install with no associated database. Just the /etc/passwd file for authentication and you don't even have to worry about configuration. It's the simplest.
 
Hey thanks a lot for these details.

Yes the first step would teh very simple approach:
- no external mail, neither send nor receive
- easy to setup
- easy to backup
- only a few users (no external mail users)

That is the status quo.

What came in my mind yesterday:
Currently I have a mail relay as not all the software packages support rhe authentication of my mail provider (Strato in germany).
The supervisor software of one of the UPS and even Microsoft WSUS does not support TLS/SSL.
So I installed a relay on my windows server that accepts a plain account and relays it to external Strato.

If I want to add this to the feature list:
- SMTP relay

So changes this the upper recommendation?

If not I would then go and try on a test system
- Mox
- Stalwart
- Mailcow
- Dovecot
- Cyrus

and select whiichever best suits me.

S.
 
Addressing the relay issue is simple, with an instance of Postfix or Exim installed as an MTA in your VM and configured to authenticate with upstream.
If you want to maintain the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle, that would be it.
It's a long time since I used Cyrus. Dovecot seems to have become the de facto standard.

BTW, what machine are you using for Proxmox? Just curious.
 
Its an intel E3-1241 v4 with 32GB DDR3 RAM.
Its ma "old" Server MoBo that I use for the second server.
I host there a second Windows DC, Homeassistant for the automation stuff and now want to use a vm on it as replacement for hmailserver.
 
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