Postal vs swaks
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted mail servers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Postal
Complete mail delivery platform for outgoing email
VS
swaks
Swiss Army knife for SMTP testing
| Feature | Postal | swaks |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Mail Servers | Mail Servers |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | Ruby | Perl |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 2,048 MB | 16 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 16,724 | ★ 1,327 |
| First released | 2017 | 2003 |
| Replaces | SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark | Mailtrap |
Why pick each one
Choose swaks if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
- Written in Perl
Frequently asked questions
Is Postal or swaks better?
Neither is universally better. Postal has the larger community, while swaks is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Postal and swaks free and open-source?
Yes. Postal is licensed under MIT and swaks under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Postal and swaks with Docker?
Postal: yes. swaks: check the project docs for container support.