Forward Email vs Modoboa

Both are self-hosted communication - email - complete solutions projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

Forward Email and Modoboa are closely matched on maintenance health (80 vs 77). Neither is the safer bet on activity alone, so choose on features, licence and the stack you already run.
Forward EmailModoboa
Health score 80/100 77/100
Commits (11 mo) 1338 647
Commits (last 3 mo) 341 141
Stars 1.7k 3.5k
Latest release 25 Sept 2026 17 Sept 2026
Licence BUSL-1.1, MPL-2.0 ISC
Built with Nodejs, Docker Python
Typical RAM 1 GB 1 GB

Forward Email

Privacy-focused encrypted email for everyone. All-in-one alternative to Gmail + Mailchimp + Sendgrid.

80/100
Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 34/40
Releases 25/25
Community 9/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 84% of tracked projects; popularity more than 44%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 56 commits 2025-11: 114 commits 2025-12: 105 commits 2026-01: 248 commits 2026-02: 142 commits 2026-03: 159 commits 2026-04: 75 commits 2026-05: 98 commits 2026-06: 98 commits 2026-07: 156 commits 2026-08: 87 commits

Modoboa

Mail hosting and management platform including a modern and simplified web user interface.

77/100
Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 28/40
Releases 25/25
Community 12/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 70% of tracked projects; popularity more than 60%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 40 commits 2025-11: 54 commits 2025-12: 75 commits 2026-01: 81 commits 2026-02: 105 commits 2026-03: 73 commits 2026-04: 22 commits 2026-05: 56 commits 2026-06: 34 commits 2026-07: 81 commits 2026-08: 26 commits

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted communication - email - complete solutions.