Postal

Complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers.

Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Still maintained? Yes: 3 commits in the last 90 days, latest release 3.3.7 (Jun 2026).

Also an alternative to SendGrid.

Docker #13 of 18 in Communication - Email - Complete Solutions

At a glance

Postal quick facts

Health score: 65/100 SLOWING
Stars: 16,902
Last commit: today (Oct 2026)
Latest release: 3.3.7, Jun 2026
Licence: MIT

View postalserver/postal on GitHub ↗ Website ↗

In its own words

The project's README opens: "Postal is a complete and fully featured mail server for use by websites & web servers. Think Sendgrid, Mailgun or Postmark but open source and ready for you to run on your own servers."

Why it ranks here

Health score explained

Postal scores 65/100, #13 of 18 in Communication - Email - Complete Solutions: 3 commits in the last 90 days earn 3.5 of 35 points, the latest release (3.3.7, 5 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 16,902 stars add 16.9 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 31.5 more points.

Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.

Health over time

Down 2 points since 11 Sep, no release for 4 months

Commit activity biggest shortfall 3.5 / 35

3 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
Release recency 25.0 / 25

3.3.7 released 5 months ago
Stars 16.9 / 20

17k 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

3
Last 90 days: 18
Last 12 months: today
Last push

Ranked #13 of 18 tools in Communication - Email - Complete Solutions by health , between AnonAddy (#12) and Mail-in-a-Box (#14) .

Details

Licence	MIT
Platforms	Docker, Ruby
Latest release	3.3.7 · 5 months ago
Stars	16,902
Open issues	50
Docker	Yes
Repository	postalserver/postal ↗

Visit website ↗ Source code ↗

Postal vs its top 5 alternatives

Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with Postal (Communication - Email - Complete Solutions), scored on the same five terms.

Tool	Health	Stars	Licence	Last commit
Mailu	96	7.6k	MIT	yesterday
Mox	85	5.9k	MIT	3 days ago
Maddy Mail Server	80	6.1k	GPL-3.0	today
Postal (this tool)	65	17k	MIT	today
Mail-in-a-Box	63	15k	CC0-1.0	8 days ago
iRedMail	39	1.8k	GPL-3.0	2 days ago

Postal: common questions

What does Postal replace?

Repoly lists Postal as an open-source alternative to SendGrid. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where Postal stands against the others.

Is Postal still maintained?

Postal had 3 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was today; the latest tagged release, 3.3.7, is from 5 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.

Run itSponsored