## Purpose
The purpose of this document is to illustrate how to deploy Mailcow in a dockerized format.

!!! note "Assumptions"
    It is assumed that you are deploying Mailcow into an existing Ubuntu Server environment.  If you are using a different operating system, refer to the [official documentation](https://docs.mailcow.email/getstarted/install/).

### Setting Up Docker
Go ahead and set up docker and docker-compose with the following commands:
```bash
sudo su # (1)
curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | CHANNEL=stable sh # (2)
apt install docker-compose-plugin # (3)
systemctl enable --now docker # (4)
```

1.  Make yourself root.
2.  Install `Docker`
3.  Install `Docker-Compose`
4.  Make docker run automatically when the server is booted.

### Download and Deploy Mailcow
Run the following commands to pull down the mailcow deployment files and install them with docker.  Go get a cup of coffee as the `docker compose pull` command may take a while to run.

!!! note "Potential `Docker Compose` Issues"
    If you run the `docker-compose pull` command and it fails for some reason, change the command to `docker compose pull` instead.  This is just the difference between the plugin version of compose versus the standalone version.  Both will have the same result.

```bash
cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized
cd mailcow-dockerized
./generate_config.sh # (1)
docker-compose pull # (2)
docker-compose up -d
```

1.  Generate a configuration file. Use a FQDN (`host.domain.tld`) as hostname when asked. 
2.  If you get an error about the ports of the `nginx-mailcow` service in the `docker-compose.yml` stack, change the ports for that service as follows:
    ```yaml
    ports:
      - "${HTTPS_BIND:-0.0.0.0}:${HTTPS_PORT:-443}:${HTTPS_PORT:-443}"
      - "${HTTP_BIND:-0.0.0.0}:${HTTP_PORT:-80}:${HTTP_PORT:-80}"
    ```

### Login to Mailcow
At this point, the Mailcow server has been deployed so you can log into it at the following urls:

**Administrators**:
You can now log in as an administrator using the default credentials `admin` and the password `moohoo` at:
`https://${MAILCOW_HOSTNAME}/admin`

**Regular Mailbox Users**:
Continue logging in at the usual URL:
`https://${MAILCOW_HOSTNAME}` (*FQDN only*)