Mailcow 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.

Mailcow and Modoboa are closely matched on maintenance health (76 vs 77). Neither is the safer bet on activity alone, so choose on features, licence and the stack you already run.
MailcowModoboa
Health score 76/100 77/100
Commits (11 mo) 354 647
Commits (last 3 mo) 104 141
Stars 14k 3.5k
Latest release 21 Sept 2026 17 Sept 2026
Licence GPL-3.0 ISC
Built with Docker, PHP Python
Typical RAM 1 GB 1 GB

Mailcow

Mail server suite based on Dovecot, Postfix and other open source software, that provides a modern Web UI for administration.

76/100
Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 23/40
Releases 25/25
Community 17/20
Momentum 12/15

Commit activity more than 57% of tracked projects; popularity more than 83%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

2025-10: 48 commits 2025-11: 18 commits 2025-12: 34 commits 2026-01: 25 commits 2026-02: 14 commits 2026-03: 74 commits 2026-04: 2 commits 2026-05: 35 commits 2026-06: 22 commits 2026-07: 58 commits 2026-08: 24 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.