Deploy and Host stalwart on Railway

Stalwart is an open-source mail & collaboration server with JMAP, IMAP4, POP3, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV and WebDAV support and a wide range of modern features. It is written in Rust and designed to be secure, fast, robust and scalable.

About Hosting stalwart

To get started, pull the stalwart:latest image, for example:

$ docker pull stalwartlabs/stalwart:latest Then, create a directory on your host machine where you will store the configuration files and the data for the mail server, for example:

$ mkdir /var/lib/stalwart Once you have completed the setup instructions, start the Stalwart container:

$ docker run -d -ti -p 443:443 -p 8080:8080
-p 25:25 -p 587:587 -p 465:465
-p 143:143 -p 993:993 -p 4190:4190
-p 110:110 -p 995:995
-v :/opt/stalwart
--name stalwart stalwartlabs/stalwart:latest Make sure to replace with the path to the directory you created above. Please note that it is not necessary to expose all these ports, read the securing your server⁠ documentation for more information.

$ docker logs stalwart ✅ Configuration file written to /opt/stalwart/etc/config.toml 🔑 Your administrator account is 'admin' with password 'w95Yuiu36E'. With this information, you can log in to the web interface at http://yourserver.org:8080/login.

Choose where to store your data Once you have logged in, go to the Settings > Storage section and configure your data⁠, blob⁠, full-text⁠ and in-memory⁠ stores. Read the choosing a database⁠ section for more details on the available options.

If you would like an external authentication directory such as LDAP⁠ or SQL⁠, go to the Settings > Authentication section and configure your authentication backend⁠.

:::tip Optional

Stalwart comes pre-configured with RocksDB as the default backend for all stores. You can skip this step if you are happy with the default configuration.

:::

Configure your hostname and domain Next, make sure that the server hostname in Settings > Server > Network is correct. Then, add your main domain name in Management > Directory > Domains. After creating the domain, the interface will display the DNS records that you need to add to your domain's DNS settings.

For example:

MX example.org. 10 mail.example.org. TXT 202404e._domainkey.example.org. v=DKIM1; k=ed25519; h=sha256; p=MCowBQYDK2VwAyEAOT2JN9F8SLTVFNEODDu22SD9RJDC282mugCAeXkzjH0= TXT 202404r._domainkey.example.org. v=DKIM1; k=rsa; h=sha256; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAykeYJjv5N0AlnJ8gKF+/8qjbStiMFWvPg+p3JPh96GPXEN6l9W/Ee6Lag6i3vLyTVH5dnRVRBhfWhc+Dc0nKreZe4f5i4L5M4RI31+RpEgu4bCmncUIk2WzJgGBW5XbiOwXjge6OKWtJQN9d8Lc1AuryL5xeged9iS6xd/+EJz4WxAf18U+j38xmAm8fJUTBnQVeb/AZup+voSKAS59jyumsb0jQtXfX5xnwTFXdiX2OF8LRrmmNs/ObHozgHftxAv+YCiSU4bqSlKNPQIrN5kk1YnZDnLlc1Gr66AWlmdUVE7PWtZPTy4f8+uHO93EW3WUxLmynZm+Syn9FTJC2uwIDAQAB TXT mail.example.org. v=spf1 a -all ra=postmaster TXT example.org. v=spf1 mx -all ra=postmaster TXT _dmarc.example.org. v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:[email protected]; ruf=mailto:[email protected] :::tip

Some of the autogenerated records may be optional depending on your setup, read the setting up DNS⁠ section for more information.

:::

Enable TLS Stalwart requires a valid TLS certificate to secure the connection between the server and the client. You can enable TLS in one of the following ways:

If you already have a TLS certificate for your server, you can upload it in the Settings > Server > TLS > Certificates section. If you don't have a certificate, you can enable automatic TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt using ACME⁠. To enable ACME, go to the Settings > Server > TLS > ACME Providers section and add Let's Encrypt as your ACME provider making sure that your server hostname is listed as one of the Subject Names. Stalwart supports the tls-alpn-01, dns-01 and http-01 challenges, if you are unsure which one to use, read the ACME challenge types⁠ documentation. If you are running Stalwart behind a reverse proxy⁠ such as Traefik, Caddy, HAProxy or NGINX, you should skip this step and configure TLS in your reverse proxy instead. Restart the container Once you have completed the setup instructions, restart the container:

$ docker restart stalwart Next steps If you have selected to use the internal directory, you can now add your users in the Management > Directory > Accounts section. If you have selected an external directory, you will need to create users in your directory server.

If everything went well, your users should now be able to connect to the server and send and receive emails. If you are unable to connect to the server, check the log files from the web-admin or under /logs for any errors.

If you encounter any issues, please refer to the troubleshooting⁠ section for help. If you have questions please check the FAQ⁠ section or start a discussion in the community forum⁠.

:::tip

Before making your server publicly accessible, please make sure to read the securing your server⁠ section.

To get started, pull the stalwart:latest image, for example:

$ docker pull stalwartlabs/stalwart:latest Then, create a directory on your host machine where you will store the configuration files and the data for the mail server, for example:

$ mkdir /var/lib/stalwart Once you have completed the setup instructions, start the Stalwart container:

Common Use Cases

Mail Server

Dependencies for stalwart Hosting

https://hub.docker.com/r/stalwartlabs/stalwart

Deployment Dependencies

https://hub.docker.com/r/stalwartlabs/stalwart

Implementation Details

https://hub.docker.com/r/stalwartlabs/stalwart

Why Deploy stalwart on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you don't have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it.

By deploying stalwart on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full-stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, AI agents, and more on Railway.