Bichon

Self-hosted email archiving server with full-text search

Alternative to: mimecast, proofpoint archive

Bichon is a self-hosted email archiving server built in Rust. It downloads mail from multiple IMAP accounts, builds a full-text search index across subjects, bodies, senders, and attachments, and serves both a REST API and an embedded web UI for long-term preservation and cross-account search. It is an archiver, not a client — it does not send, compose, forward, or reply to email.

Bichon Docker Compose example

Self-host Bichon on your own server, homelab, or VPS starting from this Docker Compose example. It runs Bichon in Docker containers using the official rustmailer/bichon:latest image, with persistent volumes and automatic restarts preconfigured. Review the environment variables and adjust them to your setup, save the file as compose.yml (or docker-compose.yml), and start the stack with docker compose up -d.

services:
  bichon:
    image: rustmailer/bichon:latest
    volumes:
      - data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Absolute path inside the container for all persistent data.
      BICHON_ROOT_DIR: "/data"
      # Password used to encrypt stored IMAP account credentials at rest.
      BICHON_ENCRYPT_PASSWORD: "changeme"
      # Log verbosity: error, warn, info, debug or trace.
      BICHON_LOG_LEVEL: "info"

volumes:
  data:

Values set to changeme are required — replace them with your own values before starting Bichon.

Prefer a managed setup? WinterFlow installs, configures, and updates Bichon for you using this same Docker Compose configuration.