Start free  ·  Watch the tour  ·  Pricing  ·  Apps  ·  FAQ  ·  API  ·  Self-host

Forward Email is a 100% open-source, privacy-focused email service for custom domains. Point your domain at us and you get you@yourdomain.com in a few minutes. Forward that mail to Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, or any inbox you already use, for free. When you want more, upgrade to encrypted mailboxes that work in Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, and our own apps.

This repository is the code that runs the service: the website, the API, and every mail server. You can read it, audit it, and run it on your own server.

Table of Contents

• Start here
• Watch the 2-minute tour
• What you get
  • Email at your own domain
  • Private by design
  • Works on your devices
  • Built for developers
• Plans
• Who uses Forward Email
• Why open source
• What's in this repository
• Related projects
• Developer guide
  • Requirements
  • Run it locally
  • Run the tests
  • Push notifications
  • Production deployment
• Get help
• Security
• Contributing
• License

Start here

Find what you want to do in the left column and follow the link.

I want to…	Go here
Get email at my own domain (no coding)	Create a free account
Forward my domain's mail to Gmail, Outlook, or iCloud	Step-by-step setup
Send mail as me@mydomain.com from Gmail	Send Mail As with Gmail
Set up Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or my phone	Email client setup guides
Read my mail in an app	Download the apps
Compare plans and prices	Pricing
Send email from my app or website	Email API and SMTP guide
Run Forward Email on my own server	Self-hosting guide
Check if the service is up	status.forwardemail.net
Ask a question or get help	FAQ or Get help
Report a security issue	Security
Work on this code	Developer guide

Watch the 2-minute tour

Click the picture to play the video on forwardemail.net. It has captions, so you can watch with the sound off.

What you get

Email at your own domain

• Unlimited domains on every plan, and unlimited aliases on paid plans, with no per-user fees.
• Forward mail to any inbox, or keep it in an encrypted mailbox with 10 GB of storage.
• Catch-all addresses, regex filters, disposable addresses, and webhooks.
• Send as your domain over SMTP, with SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS, and DANE support.
• Set up your DNS records in one click at supported providers with Domain Connect.

Private by design

• We process forwarded mail in memory and never write it to disk.
• Each mailbox is its own encrypted SQLite file that only your password can open.
• Quantum-resistant encryption, plus OpenPGP and Web Key Directory (WKD) support.
• No third-party analytics or telemetry. Read our privacy policy for the details.

Works on your devices

• Use any email client over IMAP, POP3, and SMTP: Apple Mail, Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, and more.
• Sync calendars and contacts over CalDAV and CardDAV.
• Let email clients find your server settings on their own with autodiscovery.
• Use our open-source apps in a browser, on desktop and mobile, or in your terminal.
• Write mail filters with Sieve and manage them over ManageSieve.

Built for developers

• Everything the dashboard does is a REST API call.
• Receive mail as JSON webhooks.
• Send over SMTP or the API. Your daily sending limit grows with your sender reputation.
• Connect AI assistants with the MCP server, or manage domains with the Terraform provider.
• Self-host the whole stack with Docker.

Plans

Plan	Price	Good for
Free	$0	Forwarding mail from your domain to an inbox you already have
Enhanced Protection	$3/mo	Sending and receiving as you@yourdomain.com, with unlimited aliases, 10 GB of storage, the apps, and the API
Team	$9/mo	Families and organizations: unlimited team members, permissions, and priority support
Enterprise	$250/mo	Education, government, and healthcare, with dedicated support and onboarding

Every plan includes unlimited domains. See pricing for the full comparison.

Who uses Forward Email

More than 1.6 million domains use Forward Email, including:

• Open source: The Linux Foundation, Ubuntu, Canonical, jQuery, and LineageOS
• Education: University of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon, University of Maryland, Tufts, and Swarthmore
• Government: US Naval Academy, Government of South Australia, and Government of the Dominican Republic
• Business: Netflix Games, Disney Ad Sales, Fox News Radio, and RCD Hotels

Read the case studies for The Linux Foundation, Canonical and Ubuntu, and university alumni email.

Why open source

Your email holds your most private conversations. You shouldn't have to take a company's word for what happens to it. Every line of code that runs Forward Email lives in this repository, so you, or anyone you trust, can check our privacy claims against the code.

• Why open-source email matters
• Technical whitepaper
• Security practices
• Privacy policy

What's in this repository

Forward Email runs as a set of small Node.js services. Each one has an entry point in the root of this repository:

Service	What it does	Start it locally	Local port
Web	Website and dashboard	npm start web	3000
API	REST API used by the dashboard, the apps, and developers	npm start api	4000
MX	Receives inbound mail, filters spam, and forwards it	npm start mx	2525
SMTP	Sends outbound mail for users	npm start smtp	2432
IMAP	Mailbox access for email clients	npm start imap	2113
POP3	Mailbox download for email clients	npm start pop3	2115
SQLite	Stores each mailbox in its own encrypted SQLite file	npm start sqlite	3456
CalDAV	Calendar sync	npm start caldav	5000
CardDAV	Contact sync	npm start carddav	6000
ManageSieve	Mail filter management for email clients	node managesieve.js	4190
Bree	Background jobs (billing, reports, cleanup, and checks)	npm start bree	None

The rest of the code lives in these folders:

Folder	Contents
app	Models, controllers, and Pug views for the website and the API
helpers	Shared code used by every service
jobs	Background jobs run by Bree
config	Configuration and environment defaults
routes	Website and API routes
emails	Templates for the emails we send you
locales	Translations
test	Test suite
ansible	Server provisioning playbooks
self-hosting	Docker setup for running your own instance

Related projects

Repository	What it is
mail.forwardemail.net	Webmail, desktop, mobile, and terminal apps
mcp-server	MCP server that connects AI assistants to your account
terraform-provider-forwardemail	Manage domains and aliases with Terraform
forwardemail-api-go	Go client for the API
status.forwardemail.net	Status page
spamscanner	Our open-source spam and phishing filter
bree	Job scheduler for Node.js
tangerine	DNS over HTTPS resolver for Node.js
caldav-adapter	CalDAV server for Node.js and Koa
email-templates	Create, preview, and send email templates from Node.js
supertest and superagent	HTTP testing and client libraries we maintain

See all of our repositories.

Developer guide

Requirements

macOS

1. Install n and Node v18.20.4:

   curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mklement0/n-install/stable/bin/n-install | bash -s -- -y 18.20.4

2. Make sure you are running Node v18.20.4:

   node --version
   v18.20.4

3. Install brew and the following dependencies using the brew command:

   brew tap mongodb/brew
   brew install mongodb-community redis libtool automake autoconf nasm
   brew services start mongodb-community
   brew services start redis

4. Install pnpm:

   corepack enable
   corepack prepare pnpm@9.15.9 --activate

5. Fork the repository on GitHub.

6. Clone your fork (replace YOUR_USERNAME with your GitHub username):

   git clone git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/forwardemail.net.git
   cd forwardemail.net

7. Install npm dependencies:

   pnpm install

8. Install wkhtmltopdf (optional: only used for generating PDF receipts).

Ubuntu

1. Install n and Node v18.20.4:

   curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mklement0/n-install/stable/bin/n-install | bash -s -- -y 18.20.4

2. Make sure you are running Node v18.20.4:

   node --version
   v18.20.4

3. Install pnpm:

   corepack enable
   corepack prepare pnpm@9.15.9 --activate

4. Fork the repository on GitHub.

5. Clone your fork (replace YOUR_USERNAME with your GitHub username):

   git clone git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/forwardemail.net.git
   cd forwardemail.net

6. Install npm dependencies:

   pnpm install

7. Install fonts:

   echo ttf-mscorefonts-installer msttcorefonts/accepted-mscorefonts-eula select true | sudo debconf-set-selections

   sudo apt-get install xfonts-75dpi fontconfig libxrender1 xfonts-base ttf-mscorefonts-installer libfontconfig fonts-powerline

8. Install wkhtmltopdf (optional: only used for generating PDF receipts):

   wget "https://github.com/wkhtmltopdf/packaging/releases/download/0.12.6.1-2/wkhtmltox_0.12.6.1-2.$(lsb_release -c -s)_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb"
   sudo dpkg -i "wkhtmltox_0.12.6.1-2.$(lsb_release -c -s)_$(dpkg --print-architecture).deb"

9. Install MongoDB by following the guide at https://www.mongodb.com/docs/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/#install-mongodb-community-edition.

10. Install Redis by following the guide at https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-redis-on-ubuntu-20-04.

Run it locally

Once you have the requirements installed, start the website:

npm start webAndWatch

It builds the assets, starts the web server, and opens http://localhost:3000 in your browser. The terminal shows logs from consola.

Start any other service with the commands in What's in this repository. All of them use nps. To start the web, API, Bree, SMTP, IMAP, POP3, and SQLite servers at once:

npm start all

Local servers don't require TLS. You can connect to the local SMTP, IMAP, POP3, CalDAV, and CardDAV servers with Thunderbird, telnet, or openssl.

If http://localhost:3000 loads without styles or images, run the build first:

npm run build

To stop every Node process at once, run killall node.

Run the tests

pnpm test

This lints the code, builds the assets, and runs the test suite. The tests start an in-memory MongoDB and a mock Redis, so you don't need either service running.

For verbose error logs, set these environment variables:

AXE_SILENT=false AXE_SHOW_STACK=true AXE_SHOW_META=true pnpm test

Push notifications

PUSH_NOTIFICATIONS.md documents backend setup for APNs, FCM HTTP v1, and UnifiedPush. It explains how to get every environment value, deploy file-based credentials, copy the required public values to mail.forwardemail.net, and validate the setup.

APNs reuses the existing APPLE_TEAM_ID, APPLE_KEY_ID, and APPLE_KEY_PATH values used for Sign in with Apple. Do not create separate APNs-specific credential variables.

Production deployment

DEPLOYMENT.md covers running Forward Email in production: server naming, provisioning with Ansible, deploying with pm2, certificates and DANE, bare metal setup, storage mirroring, and Domain Connect.

For server tuning, monitoring, and database operations, see ansible/README.md.

To run a single-server instance with Docker instead, see the self-hosting guide.

Get help

• Answers: FAQ and guides
• Questions: GitHub Discussions
• Support: support@forwardemail.net or forwardemail.net/help
• Service status: status.forwardemail.net
• Bugs in this code: open an issue
• Community: Matrix, X, and YouTube

Security

Please don't report security issues in public issues, discussions, or pull requests. Email security@forwardemail.net instead. See SECURITY.md, our security page, and our signed security.txt.

Contributing

We welcome bug reports and pull requests. Before you open a pull request:

1. Follow the developer guide to set up the project.
2. Write commit messages in the Conventional Commits format.
3. Run pnpm test and make sure it passes.

License

(BUSL-1.1 AND MPL-2.0) © Forward Email LLC