Mailcow Dockerized Mail Server on Offshore VPS

Mailcow Dockerized has become the default choice for admins who want a Proton-class self-hosted mail platform without spending weeks gluing together Postfix, Dovecot, and Rspamd by hand. It ships sensible defaults, automatic Let's Encrypt renewal, two-factor admin login, SOGo for webmail and ActiveSync, and a clean web UI for managing domains, mailboxes, and Sieve filters. The catch is that Mailcow needs a host with predictable resources, port 25 outbound, real reverse DNS, and crucially a provider that will not suspend you for sending too much mail at once. Anubiz Host meets every one of those requirements: dedicated vCPUs on KVM, NVMe disks, static IPv4 with editable rDNS, and a terms of service that does not panic over mailing list operators. Plan-wise, a 4 vCPU and 8GB RAM VPS comfortably runs a Mailcow instance for a small organization. Larger deployments with 50+ active mailboxes should size up to 16GB RAM so Solr and Rspamd have headroom.

After deploying your offshore VPS, install Docker and docker-compose. Point your DNS MX record at mail.yourdomain.com, set the rDNS in the Anubiz panel to match, then clone the official Mailcow repository and run generate_config.sh. Mailcow will ask for your hostname and timezone, then generate a docker-compose.yml tuned to that hostname. Bring the stack up with docker-compose pull and docker-compose up -d. The first start pulls a dozen images and provisions Postgres, Redis, Rspamd, Dovecot, Postfix, ClamAV, SOGo, and the admin UI. After a few minutes the web interface is reachable at your hostname and you can log in with the default admin credentials, immediately rotating them and enabling TOTP. From there you add domains, set up DKIM keys through the UI, push the public DKIM record into your DNS zone, and test deliverability against mail-tester.com. A clean Mailcow install with proper SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and PTR routinely scores 10/10 on the first try.

Mailcow operations after install are mostly about backups and version pinning. The official update.sh script pulls new image tags and restarts containers. We recommend snapshotting your VPS at the hypervisor layer before every Mailcow update so you can roll back in seconds if a new release breaks your specific configuration. For mailbox backups, Mailcow ships a helper that dumps Postgres, vmail volumes, Redis, and Rspamd state into a single tarball. Anubiz Host customers can ship those tarballs to offsite encrypted storage using rclone with a Backblaze B2 or Wasabi target. Because Mailcow is open source and self-hosted, you are also fully insulated from upstream policy changes. There is no provider who can revoke your account, throttle your sending, or scan message content. The only constraint is your own discipline around DNS hygiene and IP reputation.