James Basic Server — Context

Email has been around in one form or another for more than 50 years. It is arguably one of the most resilient applications or our day, and may even be called THE killer app of our time. Most of us, if not all but the most unfortunate, use email on a regular basis. If you are reading this page over the web, it is almost 100% certain that you have used and continue to use email.

Despite its ubiquity, the vast majority of people do not control their own email infrastructure. Although, unlike telecommunications or electricity for example, the barriers to owning and maintaining your own infrastructure are very low, individuals and companies alike usually defer to the large email providers for this essential service. Although relying on the big providers is easy, what they offer is often limited and in some cases much more costly than it ought to be.

The Apache James Community is dedicated to liberating email. Our mission is to make email hosting both easy and fun. We do this by: