Licensing

Plans Overview

Mailgator offers two license tiers. They differ in mailbox count, rule limits, and Docker support.

A "mailbox" means a unique email address (username) used to authenticate through the proxy. For example, if three people each use their own email account through Mailgator, that counts as 3 mailboxes.

Every new account starts with a free 7-day trial with full Max-level access (30 mailboxes, 200 rules). No credit card required.

How to Activate

The simplest way to set up your license is the browser-based login flow:

# Make sure your config file exists first
mailgator config init

# Log in through your browser
mailgator license login

This opens your browser, lets you sign in at mailgator.io, and saves the license token to your secrets file (mailgator-config-secrets.toml).

If you are on a headless server without a browser, the command will print the URL so you can open it on another device.

Offline Grace Period

Mailgator checks your license with the server at startup and refreshes it hourly in the background. If the license server becomes unreachable (network outage, DNS issues, etc.), Mailgator continues running normally for up to 3 days.

The grace period is calculated from when your current license token was last issued. As long as the token was issued within the last 3 days, the proxy keeps running.

If the license server remains unreachable beyond the 3-day window, Mailgator will stop at the next startup. Restoring internet connectivity and restarting will resolve this.

License Refresh

Mailgator refreshes your license in two ways:

• Automatic: Every hour while the proxy is running, a background task checks with the license server and updates the token.
• Manual: You can force an immediate refresh with mailgator license refresh.

# Force refresh after purchasing or upgrading
mailgator license refresh

# Check current status
mailgator license show

Instance ID

Each Mailgator installation has a unique instance ID, generated from two things:

• The absolute path to your config file
• Your machine's hardware ID

This means:

• Moving the config file to a different path creates a new instance ID
• Running on a different machine creates a new instance ID
• Multiple configs on the same machine each get their own instance ID

What Happens When a License Expires

If your license expires or is revoked:

• A running proxy continues operating for up to 3 days (grace period)
• After the grace period, the proxy will refuse to start
• The license token is removed from the secrets file
• You can renew by running mailgator license login again or purchasing at mailgator.io/purchase

Docker Considerations

Running Mailgator inside Docker requires a Max license. Containers are detected automatically (via /.dockerenv), and the proxy will not start without a valid premium license in a container environment.

To set up licensing in Docker:

# 1. On your local machine, run license login
mailgator license login -c /path/to/config.toml

# 2. The secrets file is created alongside your config
#    Mount both into your container:
#    - mailgator-config.toml
#    - mailgator-config-secrets.toml

Keep in mind that the instance ID changes when the config path or machine ID changes. When deploying to Docker, use a consistent config path inside the container (e.g., /etc/mailgator/config.toml).