dovecot/core

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

1244 stars · 347 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Dovecot is an open-source mail server for Linux/UNIX-like systems written in C, providing IMAP, POP3, LMTP, and ManageSieve protocols with a strong focus on security and performance. It supports flexible authentication backends and transparent mailbox indexing, and is widely used as the storage/retrieval backend behind MTAs like Postfix and Exim.

Use cases

• self-host an IMAP and POP3 email server
• serve mailboxes to users with IMAP/POP3 access
• deliver mail locally via LMTP from Postfix or Exim
• provide SMTP authentication for Postfix against Dovecot's auth backend
• run a secure, low-memory mail storage backend for ISPs or small servers
• support ManageSieve for server-side mail filtering rules

When to choose

• you need a secure, standards-compliant IMAP/POP3 server on Linux/UNIX
• you want efficient mailbox indexing with mbox or Maildir support
• you need flexible authentication against many database backends
• you want a lightweight mail server suitable for both small and large installations

When to avoid

• you need a multi-server, highly available cloud mail platform (that is the commercial Dovecot Pro)
• you need an MTA to send/receive internet mail (use Postfix or Exim alongside it)
• you need a Windows-native mail server

Facets

service · maturity stable

auth email http-server email self-hosted security backend cross-platform self-hosted imap-server pop3-server lmtp mail-delivery managesieve smtp-auth maildir mbox linux

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="dovecot/core")