Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#1

Post by sharmi » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:38 AM UTC

I am quite upto setting up dkim, mx records, etc. But once setup I would prefer to not meddle much andlet itrun on auto pilot.

Does "Mail In A Box" fit this use case or is there a better alternative?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#2

Post by olivierduval » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 11:02 AM UTC

I tried some stacks and now am running docker+mailu image on a 5€/month VPS... simple to configure and fully operational. You might give it a try

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#3

Post by codegeek » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

Yea MailInaBox looks good even though I have not used it yet.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#4

Post by matt_the_bass » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

I’m curious about your usecase/motivation. Would you mind sharing?

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#5

Post by sharmi » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:41 PM UTC

olivierduval wrote: post #2

I tried some stacks and now am running docker+mailu image on a 5€/month VPS... simple to configure and fully operational. You might give it a try

Thank you olivier, dockerized mailu sounds great.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#6

Post by sharmi » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

matt_the_bass wrote: post #4

I’m curious about your usecase/motivation. Would you mind sharing?

I am setting up mail for my business. I do not want to go the gmail route. I also happen to have a VPS server free to use. I have seen the occasional gmail alternative threads and the more rare self hosted mail threads here on HN. Maybe I have been swayed by the arguments in those threads ;) . I wanted to know if there is a stable mail server that I can run on my own machine, without putting too much effort after the initial setup.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#7

Post by 0xADD1E » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

olivierduval wrote: post #2

I tried some stacks and now am running docker+mailu image on a 5€/month VPS... simple to configure and fully operational. You might give it a try

I'm also running this setup. Works near-flawlessly for hosting my dozen or so personal email categories

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#8

Post by ArtWomb » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 3:23 PM UTC

Haven't tried it myself, but this was recently posted on here

https://thehelm.com/

A lot of clients ask for domain specific email services. I use and recommend G-Suite. But it would be nice to have options ;)

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#9

Post by cweagans » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

> But once setup I would prefer to not meddle much andlet itrun on auto pilot.

This is not a realistic expectation. Running a mail server is pretty difficult, especially if you're doing it on some public cloud offering. Even just keeping your IP off of blacklists can be frustrating and time consuming.

Highly recommend letting someone else deal with that problem. I've been happily using Migadu (https://www.migadu.com/) for a while. Maybe that's a good solution for you too.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best option for hosting your own mailserver?

#10

Post by cweagans » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

sharmi wrote: post #6

matt_the_bass wrote: post #4

I’m curious about your usecase/motivation. Would you mind sharing?

I am setting up mail for my business. I do not want to go the gmail route. I also happen to have a VPS server free to use. I have seen the occasional gmail alternative threads and the more rare self hosted mail threads here on HN. Maybe I have been swayed by the arguments in those threads ;) . I wanted to know if there is a stable mail server that I can run on my own machine, without putting too much effort after the…

> I do not want to go the gmail route.

I have no horse in this race, but I'm curious about why you wouldn't want to use GSuite or whatever they're calling it now. It's a really solid offering, especially for the price.