stalwartlabs/mail-server repository overview

⁠Stalwart Mail Server

Stalwart Mail server is available as a Docker image that includes JMAP, IMAP, and SMTP servers. To get started, pull the mail-server:latest image, for example:

$ docker pull stalwartlabs/mail-server:latest

Then, create a directory on your host machine where you will store the configuration files and the data for the mail server, for example:

$ mkdir /var/lib/stalwart-mail

Once you have completed the setup instructions, start the Stalwart Mail server container:

$ docker run -d -ti -p 443:443 -p 8080:8080 \
             -p 25:25 -p 587:587 -p 465:465 \
             -p 143:143 -p 993:993 -p 4190:4190 \
             -v <STALWART_DIR>:/opt/stalwart-mail \
             --name stalwart-mail stalwartlabs/mail-server:latest

Make sure to replace <STALWART_DIR> with the path to the directory you created above.

⁠Log in to the web interface

Execute docker logs stalwart-mail to obtain the system the administrator account and password:

$ docker logs stalwart-mail
✅ Configuration file written to /opt/stalwart-mail/etc/config.toml
🔑 Your administrator account is 'admin' with password 'w95Yuiu36E'.

With this information, you can log in to the web interface at http://yourserver.org:8080/login.

⁠Choose where to store your data

Once you have logged in, go to the Settings > Storage section and configure your data⁠, blob⁠, full-text⁠ and lookup⁠ stores. Read the get started⁠ section for more details on the available options.

If you would like an external authentication directory such as LDAP⁠ or SQL⁠, go to the Settings > Authentication section and configure your authentication backend⁠.

:::tip Optional

Stalwart Mail Server comes pre-configured with RocksDB as the default backend for all stores. You can skip this step if you are happy with the default configuration.

:::

⁠Configure your hostname and domain

Next, make sure that the server hostname in Settings > Server > Network is correct. Then, add your main domain name in Management > Directory > Domains. After creating the domain, the interface will display the DNS records that you need to add to your domain's DNS settings.

For example:

MX  example.org.                      10 mail.example.org.
TXT 202404e._domainkey.example.org.   v=DKIM1; k=ed25519; h=sha256; p=MCowBQYDK2VwAyEAOT2JN9F8SLTVFNEODDu22SD9RJDC282mugCAeXkzjH0=
TXT 202404r._domainkey.example.org.   v=DKIM1; k=rsa; h=sha256; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAykeYJjv5N0AlnJ8gKF+/8qjbStiMFWvPg+p3JPh96GPXEN6l9W/Ee6Lag6i3vLyTVH5dnRVRBhfWhc+Dc0nKreZe4f5i4L5M4RI31+RpEgu4bCmncUIk2WzJgGBW5XbiOwXjge6OKWtJQN9d8Lc1AuryL5xeged9iS6xd/+EJz4WxAf18U+j38xmAm8fJUTBnQVeb/AZup+voSKAS59jyumsb0jQtXfX5xnwTFXdiX2OF8LRrmmNs/ObHozgHftxAv+YCiSU4bqSlKNPQIrN5kk1YnZDnLlc1Gr66AWlmdUVE7PWtZPTy4f8+uHO93EW3WUxLmynZm+Syn9FTJC2uwIDAQAB
TXT mail.example.org.                 v=spf1 a -all ra=postmaster
TXT example.org.                      v=spf1 mx -all ra=postmaster
TXT _dmarc.example.org.               v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected]

⁠Enable TLS

If you already have a TLS certificate for your server, you can upload it in the Settings > Server > TLS > Certificates section.

If you don't have a certificate, you can enable automatic TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt using ACME⁠. To enable ACME, go to the Settings > Server > TLS > ACME Providers section and add Let's Encrypt as your ACME provider making sure that your server hostname is listed as one of the Subject Names. Please note that only the tls-alpn-01 challenge is supported at the moment, for that reason it is important to make sure that port 443 is open and that your server is reachable from the internet.

If you are running Stalwart behind a reverse proxy⁠ such as Caddy, HAProxy or Traefik, you should skip this step and configure TLS in your reverse proxy instead.

⁠Restart the container

Once you have completed the setup instructions, restart the container:

$ docker restart stalwart-mail

⁠Next steps

If you have selected to use the internal directory, you can now add your users in the Management > Directory > Accounts section. If you have selected an external directory, you will need to create users in your directory server.

If everything went well, your users should now be able to connect to the server and send and receive emails. If you are unable to connect to the server, check the log files from the web-admin or under <INSTALL_DIR>/logs for any errors.

If you have questions please check the FAQ⁠ section or start a discussion in the community forum⁠.