The Modoboa webmail is a self-hosted mail server which is free and open source software and based on Linux. The Modoboa web interface is really very simple to understand but modern. Also, it has the ability to work as a mail hosting and management platform. Right now you can only install Modoboa on Centos and Debian based Linux operating system like Ubuntu, however, the developers are trying to make it available for other Linux and Unix platforms too.
The Modoboa database support is also not limited and a user can use it with the all SQL based databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite. It can also integrate well-known software such as Postfix or Dovecot.
It is written in Python and uses the Django, jQuery and Bootstrap frameworks.
Modoboa feature :
- Administration panel to manage domains, mailboxes, aliases and more.
- Intuitive Amavis frontend to manage quarantine content and to define per-domain settings.
- Built-in monitoring
- Webmail
- Per-user Sieve filters
- Autoreply messages for Postfix
- And more
We already have done an article in which we have created a list of best known and available free and open source mail servers and the Modoboa webmail server is one of them. And today we are going one step further and let you know how to install the Modoboa on Ubuntu Linux.
How to install Modoboa webmail mail server on Ubuntu Linux
#Method first automatic
Step 1: Open the command terminal on your Ubuntu Linux
Step 2: First install the Python virtual environment and pip to manage the python packages.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv sudo python-pip
Step 3: Type below given commands to download the Modoboa installer from the GitHub:
apt install git
sudo git clone https://github.com/modoboa/modoboa-installer
cd modoboa-installer
sudo ./run.py <your domain>
Note: Please replace the <your domain> with the domain address where you want to install the Modoboa webmail server.
Step 4: The above command will install the Modoboa automatically.
If you want to see step by step guide tutorial to install Modoboa manually then please see the official guide: Modoboa docs which involves following steps:
- Prepare the system to install Modoboa
- Modoboa Database setup
- Deploy an instance for Modoboa
- Cron jobs
- Modoboa Web server setup
- Dovecot setup
- Postfix configuration for Modoboa
- Extension setup
Modoboa web interface
After the installation, the Admin web interface of Modoboa will look like something below. For your perusal, I have attached few screenshots below.
Modoboa default login
Modoboa admin web interface dashboard
Modoboa calendar
Modoboa Domain list
Modoboa list of identities web interface
Modoboa Quarantine web interface
Modoboa Demo
To view the Modoboa Demo before installing it, here is the link to Demo.
I have ever used this self mail hosting, The only reason I ran away from it, is it’s support for python2 and not python3