Windows Email Servers

Self-Hosting
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I’ve been faffing around for weeks with Ringlink, and am having problems with the email functions.

I thought it would be easier than it turned out to be. Yahoo and Gmail have gradually increased their security, so now the email modules can no longer work with them.

I thought about using one of the SMTP Email Relay sites. I made accounts with nearly all the ones listed at EmailToolTester. Those do not like Yahoo and Gmail at all because they are public email services and cannot be verified properly.

I had thought of using an external email provider, but can’t find one I like.

So now I am going to install my own email server, attach it to my domain name in the MX records and use that. Everything I have read says not to do it, but I am anyway.

Here’s my shortlist:

Best Mail Server for Windows? - A server list

hMailServer - No new development since 2021 because of security concerns.
Axigen
Smarter Mail
James - needs the Java Runtime Environment and designed for enterprises
Mail Enable
Stalwart - I am leaning towards this as it is FOSS and has good community support.

Does anyone have any experience with these or can suggest others to look at?

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A buddy of mine asked me to help out with this some time ago. We went through the same process you did, even tried a few for a while but in the end we went with stalwart. Installing is a breeze, good and sensible security, little to no feature bloat, FOSS, OS agnostic - all the things we like. To this day she’s so enthusiastic about it that she donates to the project monthly.

I see the Enterprise edition has added an “AI” LLM component, as everything must nowadays until the fad dies down - but I don’t think that should spoil the fun. It isn’t included in the free Community edition anyway.

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