plMail

Self-hosted mail with a calendar beside it. Connect the mailboxes you already have — IMAP, Gmail, Outlook — and read them side by side in one inbox, on a server you own.

📖 Read the handbook →

Installing on Docker, Linux, WSL2, macOS or a NAS · every feature in detail · connecting Gmail and Outlook, with the exact permissions to tick · how the internals work. Also on the wiki and in docs/ — all three are built from the same files.

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What it is

A mail client you host yourself. It connects to the mailboxes you already have — IMAP, Gmail, Outlook — syncs them into your own PostgreSQL database, and gives them one inbox, one search box and one set of labels in the browser.

It is not a mail server: it doesn't receive mail from the internet or host your domain. Because everything is synced locally, search runs against your database, and your mail stays readable when a provider doesn't.

Highlights

• Every account in one place — IMAP, Gmail and Outlook side by side, sending aliases included. Credentials are encrypted before they touch the database.
• New mail arrives on its own — IMAP IDLE, Gmail and Outlook push, browser notifications.
• Search that means it — full text plus from:, subject:, label:, has:, before: and friends, completed as you type.
• Filters as a tree — any/all/none, nested, restated in plain English and counted against real mail before you save. Apply one to mail that arrived before it existed.
• A calendar beside the mail — two-way sync with Google, Microsoft and CalDAV, drag-to-move week grid, invitations answered in place, share and booking links.
• Files where you keep them — attach from and save to Drive, Photos, OneDrive, Dropbox, Nextcloud and Immich.
• Yours — two-factor auth, per-app JMAP passwords, 41 themes, English, German and Pirate.

A look around

Threads — replies collapse into one conversation.	Compose — rich text, autocomplete, undo send.
Themes — 41 of them, light and dark.	Calendar — docked beside the mail, or its own page.
Filters — counted before you save.	Admin — workers, push health, logs, queue.

_{Screenshots use demo data — none of the accounts, senders or messages shown are real.}

Install

Images are published for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64. Nothing to fill in first: the secrets are generated on first start, and the public address is asked for on the setup screen.

Docker

git clone https://github.com/karatektus/pl_mail.git
cd pl_mail
docker compose up -d

Open https://localhost and create your account.

TrueNAS SCALE

1. Create a dataset for plMail — say yourPool/yourDataSet/plmail.
2. Open truenas.compose.yaml and change one line to that path:

   path_data: &path_data /mnt/yourPool/yourDataSet/plmail
   

3. Apps → Discover → ⋮ → Install via YAML, paste the file, install.

Reach it on port 30080 and put a reverse proxy in front of it. Everything else in that file works as it is; each setting explains itself in place.

Then

Add an IMAP mailbox in Settings → Mail accounts and you're done. Gmail and Outlook need OAuth credentials from Google or Microsoft first — the handbook walks through both, including the optional Pub/Sub topic for instant Gmail delivery.

Back up two things, separately: the PostgreSQL data and var/secrets/generated.env. The database holds your mail; the key inside that file unlocks the credentials in it. Keeping them apart is the point — and losing the key means the stored mailbox passwords are gone.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev setup, the test suites and the console commands.

License

AGPL-3.0.