Migadu-Small-Group-Mail-Distribution

Low-cost guide for setting up a Migadu-based mail distribution system for small groups, clubs, and associations. Covers mailbox structure, delegations, forwarding workarounds, and best practices for shared email use.

Introduction

Many small organizations, groups, clubs, or other collaborations use email and messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram to communicate internally.
This works well — as long as all members use the same tools and keep the shared information manageable.

The situation changes when:

• Some members do not have (or do not want) to use the chosen messaging app.
• You want to use the communication history as an archive for agreements, documents, photos, videos, etc.
• You need a reliable way to find contact information and keep it up to date.

Without a central system, conversations often become cluttered with:

• Repeated questions (“Where can I find that document?” / “I didn’t get that email.” / “Can you send it again?”)
• Confusion about contact details (“What’s John’s email?” / “Oh, that’s outdated — use this one instead.”)
• Links to files scattered across different cloud storage locations.

While cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.) can help, it often turns messages into a long list of links rather than a smooth communication flow.

That’s why it is useful to choose a communication system that everyone in the group uses — and nowadays, that is usually email.
The next step is to manage it centrally so that:

• Everyone receives all relevant messages.
• Members can easily send messages to the whole group, subgroups, or specific roles.
• The setup is simple to maintain.

My own small organization — a symphony orchestra — faced exactly this challenge.
We chose email as our main communication channel and used Migadu to build a flexible email distribution system with multiple groups and role-based addresses.

It took some experimentation to get it right, but the current setup is stable and works well for our needs. This guide documents how we did it — so that others can learn from our experience and avoid the initial trial-and-error phase.

Key Decisions for the Email Distribution System

Based on our experience setting up a Migadu-based mail system for a small group, we identified a few critical principles that shape the entire setup:

1. External Forwarding from Personal Mailboxes

All emails received by the system must eventually be forwarded to each recipient's external email address.

• One option would be to give everyone access to their own mailbox within the system, but most people do not want to manage another mailbox.
• Forwarding to external email works very well in Migadu, but each recipient must activate it themselves by responding to the first setup email. This step is unavoidable and can cause issues if not done correctly.
• Lesson learned: make sure this step is required only once per recipient.
• Practical solution:
  • Each user gets one personal mailbox in the system.
  • A Sieve script (see later sections) automatically forwards all incoming emails to their external address.
  • The recipient must approve this forwarding once, after which it continues automatically.

2. Use Delegations Only for Group Distribution

Within the system, only delegations are used to distribute emails to groups and role-based addresses.

• Other options, such as aliases or identities, can cause problems with external forwarding.
  • Some external providers treat forwarded messages as spam or block them entirely.
• Note: The first forwarded email often lands in spam, so recipients must mark it as desired. This is normal and expected.

✅ Summary

• Forwarding from personal mailboxes is mandatory to ensure delivery to external addresses.
• Delegations are used exclusively for distributing emails to groups or roles.
• Avoid aliases or secondary identities for forwarding purposes.

This structure ensures that the system works reliably while keeping setup simple for users.

How This Guide is Structured

This guide is divided into several subdocuments, each covering a specific part of setting up and maintaining a Migadu-based mail distribution system.

Each subdocument can be updated independently, allowing the guide to grow over time while keeping the main README concise.

• Key Decisions – Fundamental choices that determine the overall design of the system.
• Mailbox Setup – How to create personal mailboxes, configure forwarding, and apply Sieve scripts.
• Mail Distribution Setup – How to structure delegations, groups, and the overall hierarchy for email distribution.

License

This repository uses a dual license structure:

• Code (if any) is licensed under the MIT License.
  You are free to use, modify, and distribute it with attribution.

• Documentation and non-code content (including text, images, and diagrams)
  is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
  You may share and adapt it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit.