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Helm: Personal Email Server

thehelm.com

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Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#3
Interesting product with great potential. Their website doesn't seem to address my two main concerns:

1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft?

2. How would the product work in case Helm the company/service goes away (or even just service outage)? Can the device work on its own without the need for their web service (perhaps with lower delivery rate/higher spam score)?

They claim:

>> We’ve designed your Helm to ensure as little information about you as possible is communicated back to us. That’s why the only account you create is directly with your server, not with us, and why only encrypted data passes through our servers.

But how does that work with sending emails? (Please excuse my ignorance on this matter.)

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#5
The hardware looks slick, but are my emails going to bounce when my not commercial comcast/spectrum/at&t/whoever has a maintenance outage? I'm not sure it's too useful to bring that out of the datacenter and into my house...

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#6
post #3

Interesting product with great potential. Their website doesn't seem to address my two main concerns: 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft? 2. How would the product work in case Helm the company/service goes away (or even just service outage)? Can the device work on its own without the need for their web service (perhaps with lower d…

There are very good open source projects, namely rspamd etc.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#8

The hardware looks slick, but are my emails going to bounce when my not commercial comcast/spectrum/at&t/whoever has a maintenance outage? I'm not sure it's too useful to bring that out of the datacenter and into my house...

Most SMTP hosts will automatically retry a few times at spaced intervals if they can’t reach their destination host in first attempt.

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#9
Don't most ISPs ban residential accounts from running something like this?

Comcast terms:

> use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, email, web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers

Verizon terms:

> You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server.

AT&T terms:

> using such account for the purpose of operating a server of any type;

Sources:

https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspe...

https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-onlin...

https://www.att.com/legal/terms.aup.html

Re: Helm: Personal Email Server

#10
post #2

What happens when there is a power or ISP outage?

You don't have independent redundant internet connections and reliable backup power at your home?

I suspect everyone here has at least multiple redundant internet connections if they have a cell phone.
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