maddy
Composable all-in-one mail server.
maddy is a self-hosted mail server that implements SMTP for outbound and MX receipt, IMAP storage, DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, and MTA-STS. It replaces the classic Postfix plus Dovecot plus OpenDKIM style stack with one daemon and one configuration model.
The question here is which one a backend engineer would rather operate. That means SDK depth in the language already in use, whether a retry can safely be replayed, how much the event log tells you when a customer says the email never arrived, and whether the pricing curve stays sane as volume grows.
Against password resets, receipts, and magic links shipped from application code, maddy covers developer experience, and does not cover SDK breadth, idempotency keys, event stream, and webhook coverage. Whether that gap matters depends on how central those are to the build.
- DX score: 6/10
- SDKs: None
- Idempotency keys: No
- Operating since: Not published
- Event stream: No
- Best published rate per 1,000: Tiers not published in comparable form
- Webhooks: No
- Deliverability: Self-hosted deliverability depends on DNS, IP reputation, queue management, bounce handling, and ongoing abuse controls. maddy includes DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, and MTA-STS building blocks.
- Free tier: Free self-hosted, GPL-3.0
Self-hosted deliverability depends on DNS, IP reputation, queue management, bounce handling, and ongoing abuse controls. maddy includes DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, and MTA-STS building blocks.
Infrastructure teams that want a compact self-hosted mail server with modern authentication primitives.
Product teams that need managed deliverability and support.
- › Single daemon replaces several traditional mail-server components
- › Implements SMTP, MX receipt, IMAP, DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, and MTA-STS
- › GPL-3.0 licensed and actively documented
- › Self-hosted email remains operationally demanding
- › IMAP storage is documented as beta on the project site
- › No hosted SaaS plan or support pricing was found on the official site
Features at a glance
| API | No |
| SMTP | Yes |
| SDKs | None |
| Webhooks | No |
| Templates | none |
| React Email | No |
| Batch send | No |
| Scheduled send | No |
| Suppressions | No |
| Multi-tenant | Yes |
| Inbound parsing | Yes |
| Event stream | No |
| Idempotency keys | No |
| Dedicated IP | No |