Self-managed email means using SES? The dream of the 90s exclaims “ouch”. It’s a realistic choice and I am not judging it, but still, ouch.
I was born in the 90s so I'm not familiar with the "dream of the 90s" haha - care to explain?
Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#32FYI, the developer has a writeup about the design behind this project: https://medium.com/@fabianterh/how-i-built-heimdall-an-open-... At first I was confused and trying to figure out what AWS services Heimdall uses to work, and this was the section that explained it: Infrastructure I’m using AWS’s Simple Email Service (SES) to send and receive emails, S3 for storage, and Lambda functions for serverless computing. He…
Thanks for linking! I would have linked directly to the blog post but I believe it's against the rules of Show HN, so I chose to include a link in the readme instead!
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#33This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…
Totally agreed, I do not want to manage my own workflow in a manner like this. I actually just put a doc together[1] last month for anyone looking to do the same through providers that support this workflow. The one killer feature that is missing in Fastmail right now is the ability to reply to email as the same alias it was received as. I.e. if Airbnb support emails me at airbnb@mydomain.com, it'll default replay as…
I am using Exchange Online, and I cannot reply using aliases that I've created. It also always defaults to the primary username. Anyone figure out a way to make this work in Exchange Online?
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#34This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…
No worries, thanks for the feedback (I appreciate all feedback whether positive or negative).
A catch-all email address is actually less complex to build and test, but there are a couple of reasons I chose to use this approach:
1. It seems that in the workflow you described, there is some work to be done in setting up an inbox filter/black-holing the email address too. In a way, my workflow simply shifts this work to the start?
2. I don't think it's laborious because I don't really need new email addresses that often. It's also really easy to generate a new email address imo - no logins or portals required, just email generate@mydomain.com and you get a reply with an email address within seconds.
3. You're welcome to fork it and tweak it for personal use too if you want! :) I'd love that.
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#35I’m confused. Why do you want this? You don’t trust a provider to forward your email? Email isn’t a trusted method of communication anyway.
The trust reason is theoretical - in practice, I would trust most decently large services especially for unimportant marketing emails (main use case).
My primary motivation in doing this was to learn to use AWS and Serverless framework and also because I really enjoy working on pet projects :)
Could you explain why email isn't trusted? It's encrypted (vs SMS) so I'd imagine it's a far more secure way of communicating sensitive information (e.g. bank statements or one time passwords).
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you physically own a server you have to put your data somewhere, whether that somewhere is Digital Ocean, some shared hosting provider, AWS, or whatever else. You're still more in control of your data than you would be using a closed third-party product. Sure it would be nice to have other options in addition to AWS, but I don't think those two statements are contradictory. Also, I don't know if it is, but the…
> Unless you physically own a server you have to put your data somewhere, whether that somewhere is Digital Ocean, some shared hosting provider, AWS, or whatever else. You're still more in control of your data than you would be using a closed third-party product. The claim was not "you are more in control than with a closed third-party product". The claim was "No [...] having to trust a third-party company with your…
No, you're not misunderstanding. I guess I made that statement with the implicit trust of AWS so I didn't think to qualify it.
You're absolutely right that if AWS is a bad actor it has access to all the information, but I'm working on the assumption that it's more profitable to AWS to be a good actor than bad.
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#37This is a really cool project, so I don't mean to be overly negative, but personally this workflow feels quite a bit more laborious than just having a catch-all email address. Before signing up for a service, I need to email myself to get an address to use for the service? I have all emails for my domain route to me, so when I use a service I just do [service-name]@my-domain.com. If a bad actor gets a hold of it I se…
No worries, thanks for the feedback (I appreciate all feedback whether positive or negative). A catch-all email address is actually less complex to build and test, but there are a couple of reasons I chose to use this approach: 1. It seems that in the workflow you described, there is some work to be done in setting up an inbox filter/black-holing the email address too. In a way, my workflow simply shifts this work to…
Thanks for the reply!
1. I don't really think your workflow shifts any work over the catch-all workflow, it simply adds another step. In my workflow I essentially already have that alias you create in your first step. Then, if that alias gets abused, both systems require shutting off that alias.
2. Yeah, that's definitely just a different usage pattern. I'm one of those folks that enjoys testing out different onboarding workflows, etc, so I'm constantly signing up for services, etc.
3. I'm quite happy with the alias approach, but best of luck with the project :)
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#38Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unless you physically own a server you have to put your data somewhere, whether that somewhere is Digital Ocean, some shared hosting provider, AWS, or whatever else. You're still more in control of your data than you would be using a closed third-party product. The claim was not "you are more in control than with a closed third-party product". The claim was "No [...] having to trust a third-party company with your…
No, you're not misunderstanding. I guess I made that statement with the implicit trust of AWS so I didn't think to qualify it. You're absolutely right that if AWS is a bad actor it has access to all the information, but I'm working on the assumption that it's more profitable to AWS to be a good actor than bad.
> No, you're not misunderstanding. I guess I made that statement with the implicit trust of AWS so I didn't think to qualify it.
But that doesn't change that you are trusting a third party?! I mean, if that were to count as "you don't have to trust a third party", then anything does. Use gmail, so you don't have to trust a third party (except for the implicitly trusted Google)! Use Facebook, so you don't have to trust a third party (except for the implicitly trusted Facebook)!
There is nothing necessarily wrong with trusting any one of those. But then you don't get to claim "no trust in third parties required!"
> You're absolutely right that if AWS is a bad actor it has access to all the information, but I'm working on the assumption that it's more profitable to AWS to be a good actor than bad.
Well, for one, see above. But also: is it? Is it really more profitable to keep your data safe than to give the NSA access and in return get some of the good government contracts, say? Plus, trust isn't just about them not screwing you over intentionally, it's also about incompetence.
Re: Show HN: Heimdall – Self-managed email alias/forwarding service
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was born in the 90s so I'm not familiar with the "dream of the 90s" haha - care to explain?
We don't run our own infrastructure anymore :(
Yeah and seems like the big providers don't like self hosted emails. I know someone who runs a hosting company using cPanel and his clients email go to spam a bunch even though not spammy emails, his answer is to just pay extra for Google Apps and that running a email server is too complicated. Not sure how true that is... For my own future projects I plan to run everything in containers, Node, etc so not PHP/MySQL so still need to host the email somewhere, kinda hate the idea of paying a third party and wonder how they would handle shared inboxes(like piping email to a script like you can with a cPanel server). Probably other email solutions though to look into though but haven't looked into it too much yet but kinda hate how we have to rely on large providers it seems for email.
Then sounds like people running WordPress or support help desk scripts with contact forms forwarding to their Gmail, etc is a problem too... Those services think your server is the source of spam.
But maybe it's worth paying for a third party email server for your staff and also a service with APIs for programmable sending/receiving since you don't want emails to customers like password resets, receipts, etc going to spam. I noticed even when I mark someones emails as not spam they keep going to spam, I don't check my spam daily but sometimes they have to send me a IM to let me know they emailed them...
I feel like might be forced paying though instead of self handling email. Kinda feels like giving the mafia some extortion money for protection though in away. Plus email is a bit broken in the first place, open and all is great but opens itself up to abuse to spammers and scammers.