Motavi
Self-hosted email infrastructure

Your email. Your server. Your data. Nobody else's.

Every email you send through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 lives on someone else's infrastructure, under someone else's terms. We build you a self-hosted mail system on JMAP — the open protocol built to replace IMAP — so your inbox is fast, searchable, and entirely under your control.

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Built on:
Stalwart Mail Server Bulwark Webmail Thunderbird Mailtemi JMAP (RFC 8620/8621)
What you're actually paying for

Rented email isn't just expensive. It's a liability.

Every mailbox on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is a recurring line item, a data-processing agreement you didn't negotiate, and a single suspension notice away from locking your entire company out of its own communications.

Your data trains someone else's product

Hosted providers scan, index, and process your mail for their own purposes — spam models, ad targeting signals, "smart" features. Your correspondence becomes their training data by default.

Per-mailbox pricing never stops climbing

Every new hire is another monthly fee, forever. A 10-person team on Workspace or 365 pays thousands a year for infrastructure that costs a fraction of that to self-host outright.

One suspension away from silence

Big providers suspend accounts algorithmically, with support queues that take days to resolve. If your business runs on that inbox, an automated flag can freeze your company's communications overnight.

The protocol shift

IMAP was built in 1986. JMAP is what replaces it.

IMAP was designed for university workstations with permanent wired connections — a chatty, text-based protocol that needs dozens of round trips just to open your inbox. It's why "Checking for mail…" still exists, why battery drains from holding a connection open, and why syncing a large mailbox on a slow connection can take minutes.

JMAP is the IETF's ground-up replacement — a published standard since 2019 (RFC 8620 and RFC 8621), created by Fastmail and now built into modern mail servers like Stalwart. It moves everything to JSON over HTTPS: one request instead of twenty, real push notifications instead of a held-open connection, and sync that transmits only what actually changed since you last checked.

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What changes when you switch

  • One round trip, not twenty — JMAP batches every action (read, move, search, delete) into a single request instead of IMAP's back-and-forth chatter.
  • Sync only what changed — JMAP uses state tokens, so re-syncing after being offline is near-instant instead of re-downloading everything.
  • Real push, longer battery life — no held-open connection draining your phone; the server wakes your client only when there's something new.
  • Server-side search that's actually fast — mail, contacts, and calendar data are indexed together, so search returns results instantly instead of scanning folder by folder.
  • One protocol, not four — JMAP unifies mail, contacts (JSContact), and calendars (JSCalendar) into a single JSON API, replacing IMAP, CalDAV, and CardDAV.

Search your entire mail history in milliseconds.

Because JMAP indexes mail, contacts, and calendar data through the same efficient sync model, full-text search across years of correspondence returns instantly — no waiting for a folder-by-folder scan, no separate search index to maintain. Stalwart's built-in indexing makes your self-hosted inbox faster to search than most hosted providers, because the index lives right next to your data instead of behind an API rate limit.

The stack

Production-grade, self-hosted, and already proven.

This isn't a theoretical migration. It's the exact infrastructure pattern we run for our own domains — deliverability tested, DKIM/DMARC/BIMI configured, and live in production.

Stalwart Mail Server

A JMAP-native mail server built in Rust — fast, memory-safe, and designed around the modern protocol from the ground up rather than JMAP bolted onto a legacy IMAP core. Runs on infrastructure you control, with full SPF, dual DKIM (RSA + Ed25519), DMARC, BIMI, and MTA-STS configured for clean deliverability.

Bulwark Webmail

A clean, fast webmail interface that speaks JMAP natively — no legacy IMAP translation layer slowing things down. Your team gets a familiar inbox experience with the speed of the modern protocol underneath.

Thunderbird

Thunderbird's JMAP support means your team can keep using a familiar, powerful desktop client — configured to talk to your own server directly, with none of your mail passing through a third party's infrastructure.

Mailtemi (mobile)

A JMAP-native mobile client so your team's phones sync as fast as desktop — real push notifications, minimal battery drain, and no compromise for being on the go.

Who this is for

Built for teams who take data ownership seriously.

Agencies & consultancies

Client correspondence, contracts, and financial details flow through email daily. Self-hosting removes a third party from that chain entirely — your client data stays on your infrastructure, full stop.

Regulated & privacy-conscious businesses

If you handle data under PDPA, GDPR, or similar regimes, self-hosted email simplifies your compliance story — there's no third-party data processor to account for in your records.

Operators tired of per-seat pricing

Once you're past a handful of mailboxes, the economics flip hard in favor of owning your own mail server. We've run the numbers for teams of every size — ask us for yours.

How it works

From your current inbox to full ownership, in weeks.

Audit & plan

We map your current mail setup, domains, and DNS, and design a migration path with zero downtime and no lost mail.

Deploy the stack

Stalwart and Bulwark stood up on your own infrastructure, with SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, and MTA-STS configured for clean, high-deliverability sending from day one.

Migrate mail & configure clients

Historical mail migrated in, Thunderbird and Mailtemi configured for your team, and DNS cut over with a rollback plan in place.

Own it, with support

You hold the keys. We remain available for maintenance, monitoring, and scaling as your team grows — on retainer, not lock-in.

Questions

What people ask before switching.

What is JMAP and how is it different from IMAP?

JMAP (JSON Meta Application Protocol) is the modern, open IETF standard — RFC 8620 for the core protocol and RFC 8621 for mail — for syncing email, contacts, and calendars. Unlike IMAP, which dates to 1986 and needs many round trips to sync a mailbox, JMAP uses a single JSON request over HTTPS, syncs only what changed since your last check, and supports real push notifications instead of a battery-draining held-open connection.

Why self-host instead of using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

Self-hosting means your business email and its data live on infrastructure you own, not a third party's cloud that scans, indexes, and can suspend your account at will. You also escape per-mailbox subscription pricing and gain full data portability — your mail is yours to move, export, or back up on your terms.

What software does Motavi use?

We deploy Stalwart Mail Server — a JMAP-native mail server — paired with the Bulwark webmail interface, on infrastructure you control. We configure Thunderbird and Mailtemi as JMAP-capable clients so your team has full desktop and mobile access.

Is self-hosted email hard to maintain?

We handle setup, DNS, deliverability configuration (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, MTA-STS), and ongoing maintenance, so you get the benefits of ownership without taking on server administration yourself.

Stop renting your inbox.

Tell us your current setup — we'll map the migration and show you exactly what ownership looks like for your team.

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