Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

mailcow VS Nginx Proxy Manager

Compare mailcow VS Nginx Proxy Manager and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

mailcow logo mailcow

An open source mailserver suite.

Nginx Proxy Manager logo Nginx Proxy Manager

Docker container and built in Web Application for managing Nginx proxy hosts with a simple, powerful interface, providing free SSL support via Let's Encrypt
  • mailcow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-24
  • Nginx Proxy Manager Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-06-17

mailcow features and specs

  • Comprehensive Feature Set
    Mailcow offers a wide range of features including an easy-to-use web interface, spam filtering, virus protection, calendar and contact synchronization, and more. It is an all-in-one solution for managing email services.
  • Open Source
    Being open source, Mailcow allows users to audit the code, customize it to their needs, and contribute to its improvement. This provides more control and transparency compared to proprietary solutions.
  • Docker-based Deployment
    Mailcow uses Docker containers for its various services, making it easier to deploy, scale, and maintain. Docker containers also help isolate services, enhancing security and performance.
  • Active Community and Support
    Mailcow has an active community and good documentation, which can be very helpful for troubleshooting and getting the most out of the system. Community support often compensates for the lack of formal customer service.
  • Security Features
    Mailcow includes many built-in security features such as Let's Encrypt SSL, DKIM, DMARC support, and automatic updates, ensuring a secure email environment.

Possible disadvantages of mailcow

  • Complexity
    While Docker simplifies deployment, the initial setup and configuration can be complex and time-consuming, especially for users not familiar with Docker or email server management.
  • Resource Intensive
    Mailcow can be resource-intensive, requiring significant CPU, memory, and storage resources to run efficiently. Smaller servers or low-spec hardware may struggle to handle the load.
  • Learning Curve
    Due to its comprehensive feature set, there can be a steep learning curve to fully understand and utilize all of Mailcow's capabilities. It may require time and effort to master.
  • Lack of Professional Support
    As an open-source project, Mailcow relies on community and volunteer support rather than professional customer service. This can be a drawback if immediate or guaranteed support is needed.
  • Regular Maintenance Required
    Running your own mail server, even with a solution like Mailcow, requires regular maintenance and updates to ensure security, performance, and reliability. This adds administrative overhead.

Nginx Proxy Manager features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Nginx Proxy Manager comes with an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical interface that simplifies the setup and management of proxies.
  • Free and Open Source
    It is free to use and is open-source software, allowing for community contributions and customizable features.
  • SSL Certificate Management
    The platform allows for straightforward management of SSL certificates, including automatic renewal with Let's Encrypt.
  • Docker Integration
    Nginx Proxy Manager is available as a Docker container, making it easy to integrate into various environments and simplifying deployment.
  • Multi-Host Support
    Easily configure multiple hosts and services through the management interface, which is useful for managing a large number of services.
  • Access Control
    It provides customizable access lists and HTTP Basic Authentication to secure your services.

Possible disadvantages of Nginx Proxy Manager

  • Limited Advanced Features
    While suitable for most basic proxy needs, Nginx Proxy Manager lacks some advanced features and customizability that power users might require.
  • Performance Overhead
    Running the platform through Docker can introduce a minor performance overhead compared to a native Nginx setup.
  • Community Support
    Community-driven support might not be as robust or timely as professional, enterprise-level support services.
  • Dependency on Docker
    Requires Docker to run, which may not be ideal for all environments or fit into existing infrastructure without adjustments.
  • Resource Consumption
    Running the web interface alongside Nginx can incrementally increase resource consumption, especially in resource-constrained environments.

mailcow videos

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

Nginx Proxy Manager videos

Nginx Proxy Manager Overview/Review

More videos:

  • Review - Nginx Proxy Manager - How-To Installation and Configuration
  • Review - NginX Proxy Manager is a free, open source, GUI for the NginX Reverse Proxy making it easy to use.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to mailcow and Nginx Proxy Manager)
Email
100 100%
0% 0
Load Balancers
0 0%
100% 100
Self-hosted Email
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare mailcow and Nginx Proxy Manager

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.

Nginx Proxy Manager Reviews

We have no reviews of Nginx Proxy Manager yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Nginx Proxy Manager should be more popular than mailcow. It has been mentiond 293 times since March 2021. 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.

mailcow mentions (87)

  • Mox – modern, secure, all-in-one email server
    > Wow... Having just gone through a 20+ hour byzantine nightmare of setting up postfix & dovecot Did you do this by hand / manually, or use a 'pre-canned' solution like: * https://mailcow.email * https://workaround.org. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Replacement for Rackspace SMTP Hosting?
    I've been running mailcow for a long time to _receive_ mail. Sending was hit and miss. For a long time I could relay through my ISP, but that got me into delivery problems as well. Now I've been relaying through Mail.baby/Interserver for 18 months or so and it works great. $1/mo base fee + usage. With the <100 mails me and my family send that adds up to $1.01/mo. https://mailcow.email/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Ask HN: Replacement for Rackspace SMTP Hosting?
    If you had a server around, considering just setting up https://mailcow.email/ it's super easy and straigforward. Everything is in docker compose. `docker compose up` and you go. If you want a hosted SMTP for your own single domain, and volume is low, consider just using AWS SES. I run betterdev.link with it, send about 20k email per months and pay around $2 If finally you want some nice and easy UI to use for... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • A SpamAssassin Surprise
    You could go with https://mailcow.email, it's pretty easy to setup and keep up to date. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • European Alternatives
    > Which different provider did you go with? I actually fell back to Gmail for the time being - I just don't like to "advertise" any Google product for known reasons, even though Gmail is a quite solid product, sorry about the confusion - but that's my temporary solution. I am planning to either give Migadu a try or host my own mail provider. (I have seen some good feedback about https://mailcow.email). - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
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Nginx Proxy Manager mentions (293)

  • Adventures in Homelabbing: From Cloud Obsession to Self-Hosted Shenanigans
    I began to self-host a Minecraft server using Crafty Controller, an Excalidraw instance, Docmost to replace Notion, Plane to replace Jira, and Penpot to replace Figma. To be able to access them from the internet, I used Nginx Proxy Manager to set up reverse proxies with SSL. You can use Traefik or Caddy instead, but I enjoyed the ease-of-use of NPM. For a dashboard solution, I started with Homarr, but later... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Pihole v6
    Pi-hole is a killer application and I've loved it since I got it setup. One other app I highly recommend to run on your Pi in addition to Pi-hole is Nginx Proxy Manager[1]. [1]: https://nginxproxymanager.com/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • A story on home server security
    If anyone is looking for one, https://nginxproxymanager.com/ Been using it for years and it’s been solid. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Blackcandy: Self hosted music streaming server
    Most people will use nginx-proxy [0] or Traefik [1] for front ending home labs with LetsEncrypt certs... Beyond that people will protect them with things like Tailscale [2], Cloudflare Tunnels [3] or even just mTLS [4] for protected access. Home labbing today has a lot of amazing software and it's hard to keep up! And as for dashboarding [5] on top of all this there are a lot of options. [0]... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Can I put multiple services on one web domain using subdomains?
    Take a look at NginxProxyManager. This would give you the opportunity to put everything in the form of service1.domain.com , service2.domain.com ,etc. Source: over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing mailcow and Nginx Proxy Manager, you can also consider the following products

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.

Traefik - Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy

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

Caddy - The HTTP/2 Web Server with Automatic HTTPS

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.

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.