Self-hosted email you can live in
Your domains.
Your mail.
No one else's business.
Gmail is convenient and someone else's computer. Rusty Mail is the other choice — one small server, your own domains, and a webmail that feels like a real email app. No ads, no scanning, no “smart” filing you didn't ask for.
Closed source, private beta — a small group is running it now on their own VPS. No public repository. Request an invite and we’ll reach out as slots open.
You don't need an enterprise suite.
You need mail that stays yours.
Most self-hosted mail is a collection of parts you wire together and then never quite trust. Rusty Mail is one thing to run — a single server that handles delivery, storage, search, and the clients — on a VPS you already pay for.
Bring a domain you own, add a mailbox, and you can exchange mail with the rest of the internet without renting someone else's filter, someone else's retention policy, or someone else's idea of what your inbox should look like.
Own the whole thing
Messages are stored immutably on your host. Export is standard format, not a proprietary dump. Leave any time and take everything with you — that's the point.
One server, not a stack
No separate search engine to feed, no queue broker to tune. Delivery, indexing, and the web clients ship together and upgrade together.
Aliases you can burn
Per-service aliases that you can trace, expire, or disable the moment one leaks. Plus addressing and dot-insensitive names work the way you'd expect.
An inbox that has to earn its place
Most inboxes sort mail to keep you out of the way. This one sorts so you can see what's happening — and correct it.
Trusted your inbox
People you know, threads you're in, senders you've approved. Notified right away.
Screened peek before you trust
Legit-looking mail from someone new. Compact preview, images blocked. One tap to trust them next time — or send them to Junk and teach the system.
Bulk newsletters & receipts
Recurring mail it recognized as bulk. Quiet, labeled, searchable — not in your way.
Junk explained, not scored
Spam, phishing, impersonation — filed where you can review it. Every decision has a reason you can read.
No single spam score decides. Sender history, authentication, content signals and your corrections each get a say — and you get the last word.
Thumbs up / thumbs down on Screened teaches the next delivery. Stronger “always trust / block this domain” when you mean it.
Feels like email should
A fast webmail at /mail and a clean admin console — both in the browser, both speaking the same JMAP. Not a skin over someone else's API.
- Threaded conversations, drafts that sync, attachments and identities that just work
- Search that parses from: and has:attachment and saves for next time
- Labels you manage — mail leaves the Inbox when you file it, never vanishes
- Message HTML behind a sandbox; remote images load through your server, not the sender's
- Contacts and groups with real autocomplete, imported from where you are now
Mobile is next — one Flutter app, Android first, same JMAP underneath.
What you won't get asked to compromise on
- Plain-text first
- Compose is plain text today; reading rich mail is fully there.
- No filing magic
- No rule builder in the webmail yet — the engine's rules live where an admin can audit them.
- Undo, not “schedule”
- Change your mind for a few seconds after Send, server-side — no tab-kept timer.
Opening a message never tells the sender where you are. Rewritten URLs go through your server's signed proxy; the proxy answers 404 to anything it didn't sign.
Built on what already works
You shouldn't have to learn a new protocol to use your mail.
Standards, not inventions
JMAP for sync, SMTP for the internet, IMAP import to get your archive in. Where Rusty Mail deviates — like serving the normalized body — it says so.
Security you recognize
Passkeys, plus app passwords your phone can actually use. Sessions you can revoke now. No open relay — outbound abuse is held, ordinary mail is not.
Operations for one person
Guided setup, a dashboard that says what failed in plain language, and encrypted backups to S3-compatible storage with a recovery key you keep.
Rust · private beta · one binary · private builds
Private beta, by invitation.
Rusty Mail is closed source and in private beta. A small cohort is running it on their own VPS today. There’s no public repository — invites go out as slots open and the guided installer gets closer.
Closed source. Invite-only — no public signup or mailing list.