# Mail-in-a-Box vs NGINX

> Two self-hosted projects, compared on the numbers selfhost.directory tracks live: score, popularity, release cadence and setup effort.

| | Mail-in-a-Box | NGINX |
|---|---|---|
| Score | 72/100 | 84/100 ✓ |
| Rank in category | #3 of 16 in Mail Server | #2 of 12 in Web Servers |
| GitHub stars | 15 446 | 32 003 ✓ |
| Stars, last 30 days | +27 | +279 ✓ |
| Stable releases, 12 months | 4 | 21 ✓ |
| Latest release | v77 · 26 Sept 2026 | release-1.31.8 · 21 Oct 2026 ✓ |
| Setup | Moderate | Moderate ✓ |
| Official Docker image | No | Yes ✓ |
| License | CC0-1.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Main language | Python | C |

## Which one should you pick?

NGINX scores 84/100 against 72/100 for Mail-in-a-Box, so it is the safer default.

NGINX ships more often: 21 stable releases in the past year, against 4 for Mail-in-a-Box.

NGINX is growing faster right now (+279 stars in 30 days).

## Details

- [Mail-in-a-Box](https://selfhost.directory/project/mail-in-a-box) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/mail-in-a-box.md)
- [NGINX](https://selfhost.directory/project/nginx) (markdown: https://selfhost.directory/project/nginx.md)

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Source: https://selfhost.directory/compare/mail-in-a-box-vs-nginx