Software Alternatives & Reviews

Mail-in-a-box VS mailcow

Compare Mail-in-a-box VS mailcow and see what are their differences

Mail-in-a-box logo Mail-in-a-box

Mail-in-a-Box provides webmail and an IMAP/SMTP server for use with mobile devices and desktop mail software and also includes contacts and calendar synchronization.

mailcow logo mailcow

An open source mailserver suite.
  • Mail-in-a-box Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-21
  • mailcow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-24

Mail-in-a-box videos

Setup and Install your Email server easily with this Free, Open Source Option - Mail-In-A-Box.

More videos:

  • Review - Mail-in-a-Box Setup Guide (v0.16 - January 2016)
  • Review - Setting up your own mail server with Mail-In-A-Box

mailcow videos

Install a mail server on Linux in 10 minutes - docker, docker-compose, mailcow

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Mail-in-a-box and mailcow)
Email
49 49%
51% 51
Self-hosted Email
46 46%
54% 54
Email Clients
55 55%
45% 45
Email Service Provider
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Mail-in-a-box and mailcow. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Mail-in-a-box and mailcow

Mail-in-a-box Reviews

15 Best Email Hosting for Small Business (2019)
Mail-in-a-Box is an open source software bundle that make it easy to turn a cloud server into your own email server for multiple domains.

mailcow Reviews

The BEST Email Hosting Providers for Small Business in 2021
Mailcow also provides the necessary communication standards, integration with anti-virus software, anti-spam, firewall, etc. Furthermore, Mailcow stores the data on a hidden server somewhere in Germany and they have a growing base of users. The data center of their servers is operated on 100% green electricity. Installing this easy-to-use email service takes several steps....
20+ Options for hosting our own mail server
mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs The integrated mailcow UI allows administrative work on your mail server instance as well as separated domain administrator and mailbox user access. Mailcow forum. Gitrepo.
Source: dev.to
15 Best Email Hosting for Small Business (2019)
MailCow is open-source docker based email server suite. It is a collection of containers linked in one bridged network. Each container represent a single application, such as Dovecot, Memcached, MySQL, PHP, Postfix, Nginx, etc. MailCow provides a web user interface to manage the mail server and email accounts.

Social recommendations and mentions

Mail-in-a-box might be a bit more popular than mailcow. We know about 115 links to it since March 2021 and only 82 links to mailcow. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Mail-in-a-box mentions (115)

  • Ask HN: Self Hosting an Email Server?
    I've been using https://mailinabox.email on a small VPS where I host a few other websites and projects. I'd recommend it for the management aspect: It has backup scripts and a UI for let's encrypt and dns entries. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Sandstorm, Tempest, and the Future
    I don't see why we are a long way away. At the sandstorm end, we need to get to the point, where all updates (of both sandstorm and the apps) on the user machine are automatic. Much like they are automatic on various OSes (mobile OSes in particular but also MacOS/Windows). This is not impossible if a single OS like Debian-testing is targeted. Mailinabox [1] almost does it. They target Ubuntu stable, and upgrades... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • [advice needed] - Selfhosted Mail Server
    If you have a better solution, for example a good provider who offer agency packages which allows many domains and there is no catch, for example very small disk space, then hit me right away. Otherwise, please share your experience with hosting your own mail service. I found https://mailinabox.email/ and https://www.iredmail.org/ for example, but never had any experience with neither of them. Source: 10 months ago
  • what to use for self hosting email
    Mailinabox.email works great on a basic vps. Source: 10 months ago
  • Email server management on linux
    I have used mailinabox for many years on a digitalocean droplet. I've recently added-on a small-time SMTP relay provider who is using mxroute as their upstream service. Source: 11 months ago
View more

mailcow mentions (82)

  • Ask HN: Self Hosting an Email Server?
    I've been running mailcow [1] on a Hetzner cloud server for a few years and am pretty happy with it. [1] https://mailcow.email. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Roundcube and docker-mailserver (Docker Mailserver) on the same VPS
    Yes, I switched to mailcow (https://mailcow.email) and installed Roundcube via the excellent tutorial (https://docs.mailcow.email/third_party/roundcube/third_party-roundcube). Source: 5 months ago
  • Free Zoho Mail alternatives for using custom email domain?
    I have been searching for a self-hosted suite similar to Google Worksuite. I found the following: 1. Mailcow - https://mailcow.email/. Source: 5 months ago
  • Mail-in-a-Box: a mail server in a box
    I’ve used both and personally prefer https://mailcow.email/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Zimbra 0-day used to steal email data from government organizations
    I've heard good things about mailcow https://mailcow.email/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Mail-in-a-box and mailcow, you can also consider the following products

iRedMail - A fully fledged, free email server solution, an open source project (GPL v2).

Modoboa - Modoboa is a mail hosting and management platform including a modern and simplified Web User Interface.

Zimbra - Zimbra is trusted by over 500 million users to increase productivity with a complete set of collaboration tools while maintaining total control over security and privacy.

Roundcube - Web-based IMAP email client

Mailu - Mailu is a simple yet full-featured mail server as a set of Docker images.

ProtonMail - Secure email with absolutely no compromises. Get your free encrypted email account today.