p.enthalabs

Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet

stalw.art · Read Story HN original

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Have there been independent third party code and network penetration tests performed on Stalwart and what were the findings?
Nice. Curious if they will also let Mythos and related LLM's also take a pass at it.
I really like running rust infra projects, and have been using stalwart for a long time. Its been excellent for self hosting email on a small hetzner instance. Highly recommended, and happy to see the rare 1.x release in the rust ecosystem. Wrote a bit about my experiences here: https://lindfors.no/blog/self-hosted-newsletter/
Have you had any issues with deliverability? Whenever I consider self-hosting email I think about the number of comments I've seen on HN saying don't.
Same. I've been a fastmail user for years and JMAP is a must-have for me now. But infra is so much easier to manage than it used to be, and I see projects like this and I'm thinking it could just be my own affordable box in the cloud now (that I could use for other servers as well).
Whenever your email doesn't get delivered, you just resend it from your Gmail account. Receiving always works.
I've been self-hosting my email for years. Something that wasn't obvious to me in the beginning is that you can separate sending and receiving: host the receiving yourself and use a service for sending (e.g. Mailchimp, Sendgrid etc.). That can address many concerns.

I did that in the beginning but later set up my own relay hosted at Hetzner. I could do it on my receiving server (a PC in my house) but I don't have a static IP and IP reputation is a big deal in email deliverability.

I do very occasionally get sent to spam but it's fairly rare and I'm not sure my free Gmail account was any better.

I've also been self hosting for a couple decades, and I've taken this approach a step further. I self-deliver to most destinations, but for a while there was one destination (a regional ISP's mail server) that would not accept my emails. My solution was to route _only_ emails for that destination through MailGun. The volume was so low that I stayed within Mailgun's free tier.
Even a custom domain can be pain. I have an xyz domain and my mails usually land in the spam folder when I send from it. If you don't have enough volume you might have trouble as well.
Running a stalwart mail server since a few months for all my personal mails. I have auto dns configured and let stalwart handle all the dns stuff. Never had any issues. Last thing I needed to fix for perfect spam recognition: Switching from systemd resolve to unbound for dns resolution, which enables spamhouse & co. spam checking in stalwart. Before I had quit a few false-positives and false negatives. Switching to unbound fixed this.
I just wish there would be more pure JMAP email clients. But maybe soon!
EM Mail has worked pretty well for me.
Check bulwark mail: https://bulwarkmail.org

It already has stalwart 1.0.0 support ...

From their website: "Webmail for Stalwart Mail Server.

Bulwark puts mail, calendar, contacts and files in one browser client that talks JMAP to your own server."

Thanks. I am already using this, it seems to be the best so far. But I feel something is still missing from there by the usability aspect. It also uses NextJS which I don't know what to think about...
Disclosure: I build Keenrig, a self-hosted app platform, and I'm considering packaging Stalwart. For people running it: what should a one-click install get right (auto-DNS, cert handling, backups of the data dir) so it doesn't feel worse than a manual setup
This looks great. Quite new one, hopefully will be maintained.
you mentioned a secrets vault in the blog post. Is there something specific you like? I'm looking to eventualy move off bitwarden.
I also want to set up a mail server, but when setting it up, I heard that it needs to be authenticated so the mail doesn't go to spam and can be used as a service
This is an awesome add to my list of server software that runs on Windows Server. I love when devs write for Windows Server.
Why? Is it some form of Stockholm syndrome?
Been running it on a small box and the thing I appreciate most is that it's one process instead of postfix plus dovecot plus rspamd glued together with my own mediocre unit files.
Fair point, more relevant than speed tbh
Well, I know what I'm upgrading tonight. (I didn't see any mention of this in the blog post, but they also implemented batch-upload for the vandelay tool, so exporting your archive into a new Stalwart server is much faster now, too!)
Just yesterday I bought an enterprise license for my personal use because I felt like supporting a project that's doing many things just right!

Stalwart is a really impressive piece of software.

Amazing engineering work! Bought a license just to support it as well.

Can't wait for webmail next!

Couple with stalwart I have been using Bulkwark : bulwarkmail.org/
I really want to give this a try for a backup to my main email (hosted on fastmail), but a couple of those enterprise features are things I'd want to really try out as a solo hoster (AI Sieve and masked addresses). I can't justify paying $50/year for those though. :|