Maddy Mail Server on Ubuntu 24.04 | 24/7 Support by cloudimg

Maddy Mail Server is a composable, all in one mail server that replaces the traditional stack of separate SMTP, submission, IMAP and authentication daemons with a single self contained Go binary. It is a Mail Transfer Agent, a Mail Submission Agent, an IMAP server and a local authentication and DKIM engine in one process, configured entirely from one plain text file. This image delivers Maddy fully installed and hardened on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as a systemd service, so a working mail server is running within minutes of launch and you skip hours of wiring several mail daemons together by hand.

Maddy is driven entirely by the configuration file at /etc/maddy/maddy.conf. One flat, readable file defines the SMTP intake, the authenticated submission endpoints, the IMAP endpoints, the local user database and the message routing pipeline, so your whole mail configuration lives in version controllable text rather than spread across half a dozen packages. Mailboxes and credentials are managed with simple maddy command line subcommands, and there is no web console to secure.

Application stack: Maddy runs as a dedicated non root service, which is unusual and welcome for a mail server, with the Linux capability to bind the privileged mail ports. It accepts inbound mail as an MX on port 25 for the domains you own, offers authenticated message submission over implicit TLS on port 465 and over STARTTLS on port 587, and serves mailboxes over IMAP with implicit TLS on port 993 and STARTTLS on port 143. Messages and hashed credentials are stored in an embedded SQLite database on a dedicated data disk, so your mail data is cleanly separated from the operating system disk and is preserved and re provisioned with the instance.

Secure by default: this image ships with no shared or default mailbox and no default password of any kind. On the first boot of your instance a one shot service provisions a fresh per instance TLS certificate, sets the server hostname and primary domain to your instance, and generates a single administrator mailbox with a strong random password written to a root only file on the instance. Submission and IMAP both require authentication, an unauthenticated submission is rejected, and the server is configured as an MX for your own domains rather than an open relay. You then point the server at your real domain and change or add mailboxes with the maddy command line.

Key capabilities: a full SMTP MTA, authenticated submission and IMAP server in a single binary; DKIM signing of outbound mail with a key generated for your domain; DANE, MTA STS and SPF, DKIM and DMARC checking for modern, authenticated mail transport; a simple flat configuration file and command line user management with no web console to harden; and an embedded database on a dedicated data disk with no external database server to run.

Get started: retrieve the per instance administrator mailbox and password from the root only credentials file, review the single configuration file, then set your real mail domain, publish the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC DNS records and a matching reverse DNS record, and connect any standard mail client over IMAP and submission. cloudimg engineers can walk you through domain setup, DNS records for deliverability, TLS certificate management and mailbox administration after purchase.

All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.