With so many different options to choose from, how do you know which self-hosted email client is best? That’s where this guide comes in. Let’s go over the best self-hosted email clients. We’ll also tell you the benefits of using a self-hosted email client.

A Self-Hosted email client, also known as a webmail client, is simpler compared to other traditional mail clients. With webmail, you don’t need to do any configuration at all on your side. You can simply access your emails as long as you remember your email address and its password.

Also, with webmail, you can access your emails from any devices through any web browser. The data is stored in the server, so it never takes up space on your computer. The disadvantage is that you cannot access both old and new emails when you are disconnected from the internet.

That’s why we recommend using a self-hosted email client whenever possible, and only download emails that are important for you to have access to while offline.

With that said, let’s see what self-hosted email clients are available and which is best for your needs.

Roundcube

Roundcube is a modern webmail client that can be easily installed on any server. Its first stable version was released in 2014. Roundcube features a drag-and-drop interface that generally feels modern and fast, together with a slew of features, including these:

• Canned responses for easy replying
• Spell Check – no more typos
• Localization in over 80 languages
• Custom email templates to save you time
• Address book integration
• Lots more!

On top of all of this, Roundcube has extension support, along with a pluggable API for creating extensions. Some extensions that are currently available include two-factor authentication, a calendar integration, and even multiple accounts on one server.

RainLoop

The unique thing about RainLoop is that it does not require a database to run. This makes setup pretty straightforward. It’s a free and open-source application based on PHP. RainLoop also has a modern user interface which lets it handle a large number of email accounts.

Another upside is that RainLoop comes with built-in 2 factor authentication, along with social media authentication. That makes signing in both convenient and secure.

Rainloop also supports both SMTP and IMAP protocols to easily send/receive emails without any trouble. There are even more features included, like email address autocompletion, filtering, drag and drop, and so on. You can add these features with additional plugins.

Rainloop is also easy to install, you can try their online demo at https://mail.rainloop.net/ and check whether it attracts you or not.

SnappyMail

This is a fork of RainLoop, with its main focus being compatibility and performance. They tout supporting the newest browsers as well as tiny file sizes. This lets you check your email easily even on slow, unreliable connections. With added features such as dark mode, support for CSS plugins, a fully responsive design, and much better support of the IMAP RFC standard, this is a great option if you do not need some of the unique features offered by RainLoop.

Zimbra

Zimbra provides both an email server and webmail. If you want to install a mail server and webmail at the same time, Zimbra is a great choice. Zimbra is a fully featured collaboration suite that supports email, group calendars, and document sharing using an Ajax web interface. This interface enables tool tips, drag-and-drop items, and right-click menus in the UI. Also included are advanced searching capabilities and data relations, online document authoring, “Zimlet” mashups, and a full administration UI.

This is a pretty advanced platform that offers a lot more than just webmail, so it’s a great option for those that are running a business and need collaboration tools for their employees.

Squirrelmail

Squirrelmail is a PHP based webmail application, it is available for any platform supporting PHP and its initial release was in 1999. Squirrelmail is a complete webmail client, but the features are available as plugins. The default installation will include several plugins, and you can download the third-party plugins form Squirrelmail official website. It is the simplest and most lightweight webmail client, all while keeping it easy to install.

Horde

Horde webmail is a free, enterprise ready, browser-based communication suite. Users can read, send and organize email messages. You can also manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks, notes, files, and bookmarks with the standards-compliant components from the Horde Project.

Horde offers email filtering, account management, mail forwarding, password change, and on vacation message. Horde has been around since 2004, so it has some experience under its belt. The software has been packaged for all major Linux distributions and is available as a component in hosting control panels such as Plesk or cPanel.

Which Should You Use?

With so many choices that each offer a pretty solid set of features, it’s difficult to know which will work best for you. We can give you some quick recommendations, however. If you need a quick and optimized solution that you know will work with your latest browsers, we recommend going with SnappyMail.

If you need a tried and tested solution that has a large community behind it, we’d recommend that you use Roundcube. It has all the features you’d need and is continuously updated over the years.

We honestly recommend that you try and see some screenshots of each software or install the ones you like the most to try them out. They are all free to try out, so we recommend you see each of them for yourself.

That’s it – you now have the information you need about the most popular and most used mail clients. There are many alternatives to the mentioned applications, and they have their own advantages and disadvantages.

If you are having trouble knowing how to set any of these self-hosted email clients up, that’s no problem. We’re here to help. Just use our monthly server management service and we’ll set everything up for you.

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The post The Best Self-Hosted Email Clients in 2024 appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.

Checking Exim’s mail queue

First let’s see if there are any specific messages we want to delete, type in the following command:

# exim -bp

This command lists all the messages in the queue with their respective message id’s, a message returned by this command looks like this:

18h 2.1K 1dMX7a-0001rT-I2 <> *** frozen ***
         root@somehost.com

The command to delete a message in Exim is:

# exim -Mrm <message-id>

So, if we want to delete the message in the example above we type in:

# exim -Mrm 1dMX7a-0001rT-I2

Cleaning Exim’s mail queue

Let’s say you have a lot of messages in your mail queue that were generated by a spam script and you want to clear your queue entirely without sending any messages, this can be done with:

# exim -bp | exiqgrep -i | xargs exim -Mrm

As we’ve seen above, the first command (exim -bp) lists all the messages we have in the mail queue, the second command (exiqgrep -i) grabs only the message id’s from the first command and the third command (xargs exim -Mrm) passes the message id’s returned from the second command to the command (exim -Mrm) that is used to delete messages from the queue.

Sometimes you may have mail in the queue that is legitimate that the mail server couldn’t send because of various reasons and you may want to force the mail server to send this mail once the problem is resolved, this is done by using the following command:

# exim -qff

This will force Exim to send every message in the mail queue regardless of whether it is frozen or not.

That’s it, you have now successfully cleaned your mail queue.

Of course, you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Service Configuration & Optimization services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to do this for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

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Requirements

There are some requirements for this Postal setup.

• An Ubuntu VPS
• Ruby version 2.3 or up, MySQL/MariaDB, RabbitMQ, Node.js and Git installed on your server

If you get one of our Managed Linux VPS hosting plans, we’ll install all requirements and set up your server with Postal.

1. Install Basic Packages and Dependencies

First, install some packages and dependencies on your system, including nginx, mariadb, git etc.

[user]$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties  software-properties-common
[user]$ sudo apt-get install git nginx mariadb-server build-essential libmysqlclient-dev

2. Install Node.js

Next, install the latest version of Node.js on your system. To install the latest (7.x) version, use the following command:

[user]$ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_7.x | sudo -E bash -
[user]$ sudo apt-get install nodejs

3. Install Ruby 2.3

After Nodejs, we need to install Ruby and add the Ruby PPAs:

[user]$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng -y
[user]$ sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xF1656F24C74CD1D8

Next, install Ruby 2.3:

[user]$ sudo apt-get update
[user]$ sudo apt-get install -y ruby2.3 ruby2.3-dev

4. Install RabbitMQ Server

RabbitMQ will be used for messaging, so enable the Erlang PPA with the following command:

[user]$ wget https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb
[user]$ sudo dpkg -i erlang-solutions_1.0_all.deb

You also need to enable the RabbitMQ server PPA:

[user]$ echo 'deb http://www.rabbitmq.com/debian/ testing main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rabbitmq.list
[user]$ wget -O- https://www.rabbitmq.com/rabbitmq-release-signing-key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Next, you can install the RabbitMQ server along with its dependencies:

[user]$ sudo apt-get update
[user]$ sudo apt-get install erlang erlang-nox rabbitmq-server

5. Create Database in MySQL

Create a database and user for your Postal mail server and grant permissions to the user:

[user]$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:*******

mysql> CREATE DATABASE postal CHARSET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
mysql> GRANT ALL ON `postal`.* TO `postal`@`127.0.0.1` IDENTIFIED BY "passw0rd";
mysql> GRANT ALL ON `postal-%`.* TO `postal`@`127.0.0.1` IDENTIFIED BY "passw0rd";
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Always use a strong password.

6. Create RabbitMQ VirtualHost

Next, create a VirtualHost in your RabbitMQ server and create a new user for your app

[user]$ rabbitmqctl add_vhost /postal
[user]$ rabbitmqctl add_user postal passw0rd
[user]$ rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p /postal postal ".*" ".*" ".*"

7. Install and configure Postal Mail Server

Now that we finished with the prerequesities we can move on to the actual Postal setup. First, we’re gonna start with creating a user(account) named ‘postal’

[user]$ sudo useradd -r -m -d /opt/postal -s /bin/bash postal
[user]$ sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' /usr/bin/ruby2.3

Next, clone the source code from the Postal GitHub repo and add a soft link to the Postal binary file:

[user]$ sudo -i -u postal git clone https://github.com/atech/postal /opt/postal/app
[user]$ ln -s /opt/postal/app/bin/postal /usr/bin/postal

To configure Postal, you need to install bundler and procodile. Do that with the following command:

[user]$ sudo gem install procodile bundler

To finish with all the installs, switch to the portal user:

[user]$ su - postal
[user]$ postal bundle /opt/postal/app/vendor/bundle
[user]$ postal initialize-config
[user]$ postal initialize

And open your postal.yml file from /opt/postal/config and update it according to your setup.

Run Postal in the background with the following command:

[user]$ postal start

8. Create Postal Admin User

To create the first Postal administrator account, run make-user:

[user]$ postal make-user

Postal User Creator
Enter the information required to create a new Postal user.
This tool is usually only used to create your initial admin user.

E-Mail Address : admin@linuxhostsupport.com
First Name : LinuxHostSupport
Last Name : Admin
Initial Password: : *********

User has been created with e-mail address admin@linuxhostsupport.com

Again, use a strong password!

9. Check Postal Running Status

Now your Postal is successfully installed, configured and running. Check its status with the following command:

[user]$ postal status

Make sure all services are running and working properly.

10. Configure Nginx with Postal

Postal comes with its own configuration file. You can copy the cfg file to your nginx directory. Replace the default configuration file or create a new one.

[user]$ cp /opt/postal/app/resource/nginx.cfg /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

By default, Postal only works with SSL. You can use a self-signed SSL.

[user]$ sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl/
[user]$ sudo cd /etc/nginx/ssl/
[user]$  openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout postal.key -out postal.crt

Finally, restart nginx for the changes to take effect.

[user]$ sudo service nginx reload

Now you can access the Postal dashboard via https. Use the details from step 8.

That is it. The Postal installation is now complete.

Of course, you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Software Installation Services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Postal for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

PS. If you liked this post, please share it with your friends on the social networks using the buttons on the left or simply leave a reply below. Thanks.

The post How to Install Postal Mail Server on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS appeared first on LinuxHostSupport.