[Question] Does anyone run their own email server?

All this new excitement with Lemmy and federation has got me thinking that maybe I should learn to run my own instance. What always comes up though is how email is the orginal federated technology.

I am looking at proxmox and see that is has a built in email server, so now I am wondering if it is time to role my own.

I stopped using gmail a long time ago, and right now I use ProtonMail, but I am super frustrated with the dumb limitation of only having a single account for the app. I get why they do it, and I am willing to pay, but it is pricey and I don't know if that is my best option. I guess it is worth it since ProtonVPN is included. It looks like they are expanding their suite.

Is it worth it? Can I make it secure? Is it stupid to run it off a local computer on my home network?

Trondk,

Jep. running a linux mailserver for now 20+ years

its now running postfix :-), in a vm on proxmox…

DidacticDumbass,

Proxmox is awesome. Sort of the answer to most of my server wants.

eursec,

I host my own mailserver, and to be honest it's pretty painless. Usually I just let it run without giving it any thought. It's on rare occasions that I need to put a bit of work into improving the inbound spam scanning.

Selfhosting does need quite some knowledge of the software stack and several additional protocols to set them up correctly to get your outgoing email delivered. Also, like already mentioned in another comment, you absolutely need an IP address from a non-blacklisted subnet (I think most VPS providers will be okay, residential definitely not).

My software stack: Arch Linux (soon NixOS), Postfix, Dovecot, rspamd, opendkim, opendmarc.

Additional techniques configured: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC.

As you can see it's quite a lot, and I've been doing for more than 20 years now, so my opinion can be a bit skewed. I'd say go for it if selfhosting is a hobby.

DidacticDumbass,

I have been learning about it, and what really has motivated was seeing my current provider ProtonMail have an anniversary sale, and just having the least affordable pricing just to get a couple features I need. I have never been a fan of cloud storage, I have never needed an online service to handle my calendars or whatever else.

I need to do do this out of principle.

You are right, that is a lot of software in use. However, I have been given a lot of recommendations. I got my own domain name. I am almost ready. I just need to setup a few more things. I am taking a long time to do this, I got distracted with other self-hosted applications, but I do want to try running a mailserver.

ronondex,

Hosting a mail server is really easy. Making sure Hotmail, Gmail and others accept your emails is a nightmare.

I don’t host my own email, I just delegate my email management to a small provider.

amd,

It’s a great learning exercise but challenging to get right and ensure your deliverability and basically impossible from a residential-grade IP address (if you have a business class static IP at home you could pull it off).

I ran an email server for decades but gave in and pay to host my email now.

If google decides you’re a bad guy it’s such a pain to crawl back from that and I prefer my email to just work.

Chobbes,

Gotta say, I’m really happy to see so many people here actually talking about doing it! Usually I see a lot of fear-mongering about self hosting email. You can do it, though, and I think we should encourage more people to do so! It can be a little tricky to set up at first because there’s a lot of different things you need to configure and make talk to each other — I haven’t used them but there’s things like mail-in-a-box that are supposed to make this easier. But the most important thing is to make sure you set up SPF, DMARC, and DKIM DNS records (and set up DKIM signing for your outgoing messages). I’d recommend setting the ruf and rua tags in the DMARC record so you get mailed reports from other mail servers (can help you debug if your mail is getting rejected). I’d also use these tools:

https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.learndmarc.com/

Happy mailing :)

DidacticDumbass,

Thank you for the encouragement! I am inching my way towards building a server, and I am thankful for all the tips and suggestions I got.

I am starting to think that if email is the hardest to self-host, then perhaps more people should try it. It is worthy to take regain indepedence and autonomy of technology, even if it seen as a lost cause.

Yeah, I hope to get something running soon, just so I can say I did it.

Chobbes,

I wish you luck! Some people claim to have troubles sending emails with Outlook blocking whole IP blocks, but it’s a little unclear how much of a problem this actually is to me… it’s a little hard to know if outlook is actually doing this or if people have misconfigured mail servers… In my experience people complaining about this often have a broken dkim key or something. Maybe it’s worth signing up for https://www.dnswl.org/ too, but I’m not sure how big of a difference it makes.

DidacticDumbass,

I will definitely look into those things if I run into troubles!

Robbie,

E-mail was the first "thing" that got me off of Google (to Proton & then currently Tutanota) but is really the last remaining service I not have self hosted.

I have always read about how difficult and time consuimg it was to run your own mail server, but I felt like I needed to experience it myself. So I purchased another domain and followed the instructions on https://mailinabox.email/.

I am using a small VPS on Hetzner and I have to say the experience has been almost flawless so far. I did need to have my new domain taken off the Domain Block List, but Hetzner gave me a clean IP and defaults to blocking port 25 outbound to prevent spam (simple ticket to open, once account is 30 days old and paid).

I know I'm still early into this journey so far, but it has been really simple and I plan to test this secondary domain for a few months before moving onto it full time.

As an avid self hosted of literally everything else, I can say it has been a lot of fun learning so far!

DidacticDumbass,

Hell yes, I love the enthusiasm! I just got a domain, which is giving me 3 months of email, so that is great. I feel like Tutanota is the most honest email service when it comes to advertising privacy, and they do some stuff that Proton definitely does not, like make recovery impossible without a key, and use no other method.

My next step is to get a VPS, and Hetzner is the name I have seen pop up the most. I will use that.

Thank you!

Robbie,

Yes I haven't had any real issues with Tutanota, but it seems like the common trend is that they, and everyone else, is raising prices for things I dont really need. But at the same time, the things I do need, I.e. accounts with enough storage for my family, will start costing more than the price of renting a VPS alone. So for me, its partially privacy, but also ownership of my data and cost benefit analysis where I am now trying to make CERTAIN that my self hosted email is worth the cost savings.

Robbie,

Also to add on, I didn't like that tutanota requires their app and that was another reason I wanted to switch. Their app is also really slow for me, where I know I received emails but they take way too long to "load" and "appear" once I open the app.

DidacticDumbass,

That is the thing, I am willing to pay for email, because then the incentives are real to the provider to follow best practices for privacy and quality of life, but the pricing blows up too quickly due to to features I will never use. I need something more granular.

I am also looking at Disroot and Posteo, which I like because the have hardened ethical principles driving their services, and that is worth supporting.

frantic6423,

I do. Run about a half dozen email servers for various organizations. Been doing it for almost a decade for some. Other than initial setup pain, I've had zero problems others describe. I have used (and still run) docker-mailserver, mailcow, mail-in-a-box and mailu. All are lovely in their own way and fit various use cases better than others.

konekt,

Your comment is amazing and your experience with that too. Could you explain a little more about what pros and cons of these services? I saw right here the link to IsPGuide - workaround.org where he recommends Debian and metal service. Would you have any opinion on that too?

DidacticDumbass,

This is so encouraging! For sure it takes a level of technical proficiency and experience, but any technology that has been around for decades has been simplified and automated in one way or another. In retrospect, it is ridiculous to think that all these email providers could exist if they could not overcome the stranglehold of Google and Microsoft, so it must be possible for individuals to do it too,

ShittyKopper,

I feel like I'll eventually have to... mailbox.org upped their prices from 1 EUR/mo to... whatever they are right now, and on top of that I'll still need a VPN to access heinous sites such as pastebin (welcome to Turkey), which is another 5 EUR/mo.

For that money I could get an alright enough VPS from Hetzner and spend some time getting everything configured properly, and have bonus flexibility in terms of hosting anything else I might want to host.

The problem with this ofc is that no "turnkey" mail bundle seems to give a shit about resource usage as far as I'm aware, and I'm worried they'll end up hogging all the server resources for themselves.

DidacticDumbass,

Interesting, I would think that email requires the least amount of resources, which is probably why so little effort is put to optimizing it.

alvaro,

@DidacticDumbass I do, it is a pain and I understand why it is not worth for some people.

DidacticDumbass,

This is way out of my comfort zone and I am firmly in the research phase, almost ready to make some decisions, but I need to carve out time to set it all up.

alvaro,

@DidacticDumbass If it helps you, I started with https://mailinabox.email, which is incredibly easy to set up.

Right now I'm using https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver which I feel it is a bit trickier, but more escapable in the long term

DidacticDumbass,

This looks really solid. It looks like I have a couple options for Docker that seems to make life easier. Thank you for the suggestion.

boilingpenguin,

I've thought about rolling my own email service, but I'm hesitant given the risk of it inadvertently nuking the rest of my network. There's a lot of work needed to keep the thing secure, and even if you do everything right there's a good chance you get SMTP traffic blocked because other services are worried about unknown accidentally hosting spammer networks.

Plus given my prior track record, there is a $1000% chance I screw up the DNS entries for any mail servers I set up.

DidacticDumbass,

A lot of people on here are way more technically minded than I will ever be, so if they are having trouble, I AM IN TROUBLE! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

I think I will be fine. I am keeping the emails I already set up. If I get fluent and comfortable running my own email server, I may migrate, but I am not shooting myself in the foot anytime soon.

Dumledyr2005,

I run a complete ISP style setup with multiple domains. I run it from a rented server at Hetzner, so i don't have problems with being black listed for sending from a consumer IP.

DidacticDumbass,

Nice! I appreciate the guide! Even if I end up using a premade solution, knowing how everything works will help me be smarter about the choices I make.

Thank you.

njaard,

Yes, and I love it.

I use mailjet as a proxy on outgoing emails so that I get fewer of my sent messages rejected, which works.

It was a pain to setup but it's treating me very well.

DidacticDumbass,

Neato! I was so concerned about the logistics of sending and receiving emails, it never occurred to me that I could get fancy and make nice looking emails. All I use is text, yet I can do so much better.

njaard,

No, I only write plain text emails, mailjet only has ip addresses that are generally not blocked by the big providers and they do all the DCIM stuff.

DidacticDumbass,

I get that, I will definitely need to choose a service that helps to not get sending blocked. Still, I was amused that templates were such a big selling point.

enbee,

a bit late to the party here, but I didnt see iRedmail mentioned. been using this to host my own email on a VPS for a little over a year now and its great. for me its worth, you can absolutely make it secure, and its not stupid to run it off a local computer. unfortunately most ISPs make it insanely difficult to host on your home network.

DidacticDumbass,

Okay, what a program. THIS does everything. I mean, just on paper it does it all. Thanks for the suggestion.

Aaronjamt,

How do you send mail with it? I've played around with using Postfix and never had luck with the outbound mail side, largely because my ISP blocks port 25 and I couldn't ever figure out how to authenticate with public SMTP relays (like Gmail's, for instance) such that they will actually let me send emails from my domain.

enbee,

the documentation for iRedmail covers your question. I abandoned trying to host locally because my ISP blocks all email related ports.

Aaronjamt,

Can you point me to where it describes sending email? I can't seem to find that mentioned. When you say you abandoned trying to host locally, did you move to a more "traditional" public email service like Outlook or Gmail or did you continue selfhosting, just on a VPS or similar? If the latter, are there any services you recommend?

zmhanham,

Infomaniak has pretty nice free email server options that you can link your domain to. They are a Switzerland based company which is known for having the best privacy laws around.

DidacticDumbass,

Wow, this looks pretty awesome. It has become obvious that I need to buy my own domain name, and Infomaniak makes it kind exciting, since it basically lets me jump into exactly what I am trying to do. Seriously, when I think I have seen all of my options, something new pops up that trumps it all.

Should I buy my domain from Infomaniak, or is it better somewhere else? What name would I even choose? Will I get my first pick? What extension is the coolest while still maintaining an air of professionalism? Maybe I should buy too, one that is just my full ass name, and the other a fun one to be the central hub of all my online things that I will probably start doing now that I am excited by this.

zmhanham,

I guess it defeats the point of self hosting. But a common theme is that email self hosting is extremely difficult. Many things to take into account. I'd say go for it and maybe you'll learn a lot in the process. But if you give up on self hosting it, but still want yiue own mail server on your own domain, then I'd say use infomaniak.

DidacticDumbass,

Yeah, I don't necessarily want to give up because I think it is cool. Plus, there are use case where receiving is all that matters, like weekly mailing list with fun articles and recommendations, and I hate blowing up an email address just for that. Confirmation is still a problem, but I am willing to experiment with that.

Okay, I will just by the domain name. I have been wanting one for awhile but never took the plunge, and I can't think of anything special... well, I just came up with something better. This is good.

greaterthanstupid,

there are many replies saying similar things, but don't be discouraged from try it out. i host my own with mailinabox on a vm from a cloud provider. no spam issues. the only wildcard was spending a few months getting my ip address off google's spam filters. it is so worth it, i own my own email/calendar/contacts/notes/todo list/ AND website solution. all with mailinabox. completely disconnected from google etc.

cvr,

Did you ever manage to get off hotmail/outlook spam filters? I ran my own server for years and had no issues with gmail, but was never able to reliably send to hotmail. That was the nail in the coffin in the end as so many businesses I communicate with were on outlook and my mail would always goto spam causing endless issues.

greaterthanstupid,

yes i did. through mxtoolbox(iirc) i learned what blacklists my ip was on. and it wasnt my IP, but my ip block. it was just a matter of filing online requests to have my Ip removed from these lists. With google, i had to have a google account and login and pinky-swear that i would not send spam, and it got me off that list. google was really the most difficult to find info for. beware though, there are some places that say if you pay them, they will get you off the list. don't believe it. it is free or its a scam

cvr,

Thanks for the info. I'll have another go with a spare domain to see if I can get it to working across the board.

DidacticDumbass,

The more I learn about FOSS the more I understand it is just not about using open auditable software, but about having complete ownership of the technology a person uses. I need to learn these things.

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