Documentation / Start here
Overview
What Alt8Mail is, how the workspace fits together, and how this manual is organized.
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#One system, three control planes
Alt8Mail is a self-hosted email and collaboration workspace from Altgence. It runs on infrastructure you control and combines business mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, files, document editing and optional AI assistance in one product.
The product deliberately separates three surfaces. They share a host and database, but they have separate sessions, permissions and security boundaries.
| Plane | Audience | Typical address | What it controls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webmail | End users | https://mail.example.com/ | Mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes, Cabinet, Office and AI |
| Customer Admin | Tenant owners and delegated administrators | https://mail.example.com/admin/ | Users, domains, groups, roles, policies, audit, compliance and integrations |
| System Control | Host and platform operators | https://mail.example.com:8808/ | Mail services, TLS, storage, backups, firewall, upgrades and host diagnostics |
System Control is not a larger version of the tenant admin console. It is a root-equivalent operations plane and should be reachable only from a management network or VPN. The customer admin console does not grant host access.
#The workspace
The user workspace is built around the work that arrives in email rather than a single inbox view.
- Mail provides threaded conversations, server-side search, folders and labels, server-backed drafts, send later, undo send, Sieve rules, forwarding, vacation replies, subscription management and attachment previews. Sender-authentication results are shown beside the message.
- Connected accounts add external IMAP/SMTP accounts, a unified inbox and per-account folders and sending identities. Connected account traffic stays inside the account sync workers and tenant policy.
- Office opens documents, spreadsheets and presentations in an embedded OnlyOffice editor. Files come from Cabinet, save back as immutable workspace versions, and can be governed by DLP and retention policy.
- Calendar provides day through month and agenda views, shared calendars, invitations, RSVP links, recurrence, rooms and resources, public booking pages, iCalendar feeds, CalDAV and CardDAV.
- People combines the internal directory with personal address books and multiple contacts books.
- Tasks provides assignments, due dates, priorities, dependencies, Kanban status, recurrence and reminders, including tasks created from a message.
- Notes is a per-mailbox desk with one pinned active note, archive search, Markdown-lite formatting and typed links to conversations, events and files.
- Cabinet unifies Alt8Mail Drive with optional connected storage providers, with folders, uploads, versions, sharing, comments, approvals, retention and DLP controls.
- AI is optional and tenant-scoped. An administrator chooses the provider and model; summaries, translation, reply drafting and attachment context use only the material a user selects. Advanced AI capabilities are licensed separately.
The full feature map, including limits and edition gates, is in the feature guide.
#The deployment
A supported deployment targets Debian 12 on a single host. The installer provisions PostgreSQL, Redis, Postfix, Dovecot, Rspamd, ClamAV, nginx, the Go application services and the System Control service. OnlyOffice runs as a separate Docker deployment, managed from System Control when Office is required.
The server has no multi-node or high-availability mode. Plan for a well-sized host, monitored local storage, tested backups and a documented restore procedure rather than assuming automatic failover. The requirements and installation pages cover the supported baseline.
#Editions and licensing
Alt8Mail is one codebase. A commercial capability is unlocked by an offline, signed license and its features list, not by a different binary. The license can also carry seats and an expiry date.
The open-source core remains usable when no license is present. An expired or invalid license disables paid capabilities but does not lock users out of core mail. This documentation describes the capability and the license key that gates it; it does not publish commercial rates. Confirm the current entitlement set in the customer admin console or System Control before promising a capability to users.
#How this manual is organized
| Section | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Start here | Requirements, installation and the first working deployment |
| Product | The complete user and administrator feature map |
| Run | Daily operations, migration, backups and updates |
| Protect | Authentication, mail security, policy, audit and hardening |
| Help | Troubleshooting, support and security disclosure |
The manual describes Alt8Mail 3.6.0. The live release value is available from the site's /api/release endpoint and is editable in the Alt8Mail control desk. If you are reading this on a deployment whose version differs, verify the behavior against the running release before you rely on it.
#What this manual does not claim
Alt8Mail is not certified under SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP or PCI DSS by virtue of this documentation. No certification, penetration-test result or uptime guarantee is implied. The product does not provide S/MIME, OpenPGP or end-to-end encrypted mail, native mobile apps, a built-in helpdesk, or point-in-time database recovery. The secure page states the security boundaries that matter during evaluation and operation.
#Where to go next
- New deployment: read Requirements, then Installation.
- Existing deployment: use Operate and Troubleshooting.
- Security review: start with Secure.
- Moving old mail: read Mailbox migration.
- Commercial or operational help: use Support.
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