Stalwart Mail Server
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 9 mail servers
Praised as an easy, single-binary self-hosted mail server that replaces several separate tools; critics mention a large binary and occasional crashes during self updates.
Praised as an easy, single-binary self-hosted mail server that replaces several separate tools; critics mention a large binary and occasional crashes during self updates.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 87%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 3 months
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy single-binary setup
“You have projects like https://stalw.art which make it quite easy. Single binary setup which covers all functionality you need.”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “The Future of Email” “I have deployed stalwart as my replacement for mailu and iv never had such an easy time setting up mail, i love it.”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Self hosted email continues to steeply decline” “makes it so much easier to build an e-mailsystem on your server”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Self hosted email continues to steeply decline” - Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: How do people self host email and maintain deliverability?”
Strong engineering quality
“Continue to be impressed with the quality and quantity of work Mauro is putting out for this project”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Stalwart v0.16: A New Foundation” “Amazing engineering work! Bought a license just to support it as well.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet” “Stalwart is a relatively new, well written email server.”
Comment from 23 Feb 2026 in “Ladybird Browser adopts Rust” - Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet”
Good for self-hosting email
“I would recommend a local IMAP server like Dovecot or Stalwart installed as Docker”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support” “Its been excellent for self hosting email on a small hetzner instance.”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Stalwart v1.0: The Fastest Mail Server on the Planet” “systems like Mox mailserver or stalwart guide you through it”
Comment from 9 May 2026 in “Google Broke reCAPTCHA for De-Googled Android Users” - Comment from 15 May 2026 in “The era of 15GB free Gmail storage is ending”
Fast, scalable mail server
“Maddy and Stalwart have cheap enough concurrency and good enough scalability”
Comment from 27 Jul 2026 in “Modern email can be built from borrowed parts” “a high performant jmap server implementation in rust”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Thunderbird adds native Microsoft Exchange email support”
Other mail servers people recommend
The four most recommended other mail servers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 9 mail servers, rankedWhat people said
29 of the 33 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I can't justify paying $50/year for those though.”
“Amazing engineering work! Bought a license just to support it as well.”
“a project that's doing many things just right”
“Well, I know what I'm upgrading tonight.”
“it's one process instead of postfix plus dovecot plus rspamd glued together”
“I love when devs write for Windows Server.”
“Its been excellent for self hosting email on a small hetzner instance.”
“Stalwart mail is really good and easy to setup.”
“but seems quite fragile, 4 times now it’s killed itself doing some self updates.”
“I have deployed stalwart as my replacement for mailu and iv never had such an easy time setting up mail, i love it.”
“makes it so much easier to build an e-mailsystem on your server”
“Maddy and Stalwart have cheap enough concurrency and good enough scalability”
“Stalwart + LLMs can help with the full-time email administrator part. It's a lot easier than it was.”
“own email server (stalward - rust based email server)”
“You have projects like https://stalw.art which make it quite easy. Single binary setup which covers all functionality you need.”
“For email look into stalwart and host it for yourself.”
“If security is your concern, Stalwart seems like a fine option”
“systems like Mox mailserver or stalwart guide you through it”
“I just want it to already be the standard”
“Continue to be impressed with the quality and quantity of work Mauro is putting out for this project”
“In a day I can now deploy Caddy, Authentik, Fleet, Headscale, Stalwart”
“ironically broke stalwart/himilaya somewhere along the lines”
“But it’s still too many dependencies and too slow. The binary is pretty huge too.”
“That's not normal for Rust code at all.”
“Stalwart is a relatively new, well written email server.”
“But now I've got my very own email client, powered by the stalwart email server.”
“if you need something battle-tested right now, those are solid choices”
“I would recommend a local IMAP server like Dovecot or Stalwart installed as Docker”
“a high performant jmap server implementation in rust”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.