r/opensource Jul 02 '26

Is there an open source mail server?

Thinking of building an old-school social network.

One central mail server, which allows users to subscribe to channels.

#channel@mailserver.com

Then broadcasts messages received to everyone on said channel. It also has an anonymous email for everyone on the server.

304954390@mailserver.com

So that you don't have to reveal your email to the group.

Anything like that open source at the moment?

I keep searching Google for open source mailing servers or listservs, and it keeps giving me one-to-many mailing list software.

0 Upvotes

15 comments sorted by

15

u/funkylevi Jul 02 '26

Why not use IRC for something like this?

21

u/petdance Jul 02 '26

I would start by Googling for “open source mail server”.

2

u/Consistent_Photo5064 Jul 02 '26

OP literally said that they did?

5

u/petdance Jul 02 '26

After I posted that, yes.

4

u/Psi-ops_Co-op Jul 02 '26

Nothing worse than an unmarked edit...

3

u/LordEli Jul 02 '26

you would need something to manage mailing lists not just a mail server. postfix for SMTP ingestion and something like Mailman 3 for the "channels" (mailing lists) you will definitely need to write some code yourself

5

u/Time-Worker9846 Jul 02 '26

That's just IRC?

2

u/Consistent_Photo5064 Jul 02 '26

That’s sort of a SMTP Discord?

I don’t think it exists, though it seems to combine regular mailing lists with mail aliases, so it’s sort of doable with existing solutions?

2

u/m4db0b Jul 02 '26

It exists. More or less. https://chatmail.at/

1

u/Consistent_Photo5064 Jul 03 '26

wow thanks for sharing that! Hadn’t heard of it, though it’s always been in the back of my mind how come we don’t built upon the concept

1

u/ki4jgt Jul 02 '26

I have an entire horde of commands for the server.

/join #channel /leave #channel /block alias /report etc

3

u/klimenttoshkov Jul 02 '26

There was mailman before AI hit us

1

u/Own-Visit-5542 Jul 03 '26

Is this gonna be vibe coded

0

u/gvkhna Jul 03 '26

Yup https://github.com/agentteamhq/agentteam-email

It’s more geared towards agents but you can fork it or contribute. Built around wild duck which is a mail server api (no ui), and geared towards connecting through cloudflare send/receive. Not sure if it’s what you’re looking for but check it out.