Bichon
Email archiving server that syncs from IMAP accounts, indexes emails for full-text search, and provides a REST API. No external database required, includes WebUI with multi-account support.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 132 commits in the last 90 days, latest release 2.2.0 (Oct 2026).
Comparisons in Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP): Wayback Machine alternatives.
At a glance
Bichon quick facts
- Health score
- 93/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 2,056
- Last commit
- yesterday (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- 2.2.0, Oct 2026
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
Top alternatives to Bichon
In its own words
The project's README opens: "A self-hosted email archiving server built in Rust. Download emails from IMAP accounts, builds a full-text search index, and serves a REST API with an embedded WebUI. Purpose-built for long-term preservation, unified cross-account search, and programmatic access to archived email."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Bichon scores 93/100, #5 of 19 in Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP): 132 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the latest release (2.2.0, 10 days ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 2,056 stars add 13.3 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is star count, worth 6.7 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
Health over time
- Commit activity 35.0 / 35
132 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
2.2.0 released 10 days ago
- Stars biggest shortfall 13.3 / 20
2.1k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 10.0 / 10
Docker image or Compose file available
Commit activity
- 132
- Last 90 days
- 354
- Last 12 months
- yesterday
- Last push
Ranked #5 of 19 tools in Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP) by health , between Papra (#4) and mail-archiver (#6) .
Details
| Licence | AGPL-3.0 |
| Platforms | Rust, Docker |
| Latest release | 2.2.0 · 10 days ago |
| Stars | 2,056 |
| Open issues | 28 |
| Docker | Yes |
| Repository | rustmailer/bichon ↗ |
Bichon vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with Bichon (Archiving and Digital Preservation (DP)), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Papra | 95 | 5.6k | AGPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| Bichon (this tool) | 93 | 2.1k | AGPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| mail-archiver | 93 | 2.2k | GPL-3.0 | 2 days ago |
| Ganymede | 92 | 1k | GPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| Eonvelope | 84 | 10 | AGPL-3.0 | 10 days ago |
| Open Archiver | 84 | 2.4k | AGPL-3.0 | 6 days ago |
Bichon: common questions
Is Bichon still maintained?
Bichon had 132 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was yesterday; the latest tagged release, 2.2.0, is from 10 days ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.
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