As someone who has a homelab, I would be interested if there was an option to use your own hardware, and just subscribe to their email service. I would accept the "risks of having my own hardware" that they couldn't guarantee up time etc. +1 if it was containerized.
Helm: Personal Email Server
311–320 of 592 posts
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#312This is a market cash grab that preys on peoples' ignorance and fears. Fancy looking hardware for an excessive cost that isn't stand-alone. For e-mail. Really?
I know the founders and can confidently say this is anything but a cash grab. They don’t andvertise this fact, but the guys are really into privacy, and they want to see this come to life for the sake of data protection. VC funding is the means to make it a reality, as good hardware is expensive and takes time to get right.
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#313So. The case is interesting maybe. But 500usd for a $pi with a 30usd ssd?
And then 99usd/yr to route mail via a t2 nano on 1yr free tier?
So in a year's time the relay service will stop?
Or before that the ec2 instance will go down but then that means enough helms have been sold...
I could be wrong....
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#314So this is bikeshed territory but what with the shape of the "box"? You can't stack anything on it and it seems to take much more room than necessary that way. Reading the (mouse hijacking) technology page I see: >Helm is a high-performance server with capabilities normally found in larger, business-class hardware. To accomplish this performance in a smaller (and quieter) form factor, Helm has been engineered to diss…
The design actually allows for server stacking when you need more compute or storage. It does fully passive cooling with no fan.
Are there third parties selling servers with this form factor? Or would we be locked into Helm when we need more compute or storage?
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#315I read the whole tech page and some of the comments here. I might be willing to pay for this service, but not in its current form. I wouldn't want to spend 500USD on a proprietary hardware in addition to paying a subscription fee. What needs to happen to convince me to pay: Open up the hardware component as a platform for anyone to extend (allowing direct ssh, or using my own hardware). It's fine to not open source t…
Also only 1 year warranty
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#316If the thing you're going against is "corporate server controls your data", why is the answer "EC2 proxy we control"? It sounds like I have to trust that server just as much, and essentially you're telling me you're, for some unspecified reason, more trustworthy than Google? Do you have stats on e-mail deliverability given that you're suggesting I send all my e-mail through a random EC2 EIP? (Is it actually an EIP, o…
Hi lvh - it's not a proxy. The EC2 instance can't see your emails. The Helm server initiates and receives TLS connections through the instance so it's really an extra hop on the internet. We don't see or keep data on deliverability of individual Helm servers. We use a dedicated EIP that we ensure are not on blacklists and configure reverse DNS as well.
If that’s the case, why does it listen on IMAPS/993 and 587?
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You could run a managed cloud e-mail service where only the users hold the encryption keys, too. How is this a hardware problem? This is the key question, in my mind. There's only one reason I'd want to own the hardware—to manage/add/create my own services and handle my own backups because I don't trust a company's involvement in these[0]. If this is so tightly controlled that I can't add my own services and I can'…
This is a valuable and useful criticism and we're going to talk about this at our next board meeting. How do you know who to trust? You surely have to trust someone. It feels generally true that we can trust Apple since we pay them for hardware and their ongoing business interest is in protecting their revenue streams through their hardware and iOS app store, which means you are aligned. Generally for Helm that's a g…
What’s the intersection between people without the know-how to run their own servers and the people who understand what tech companies do with data well enough to feel that this is a big enough need?
In my experience, the average person doesn’t really understand what GMail or Facebook or whoever do with data or the extent of their knowledge about individuals. Even basic things like lookalike audiences or retargeting across the web regularly blow people’s minds.
I hope this project is successful, partly because that would show that people do understand these things enough to view Helm as solving an urgent need. I wonder if we’re there yet.
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#318I like the design. Its cool. But i cannot see the price to be reasonable. Personally if someone wants local server - mail with be not enough of a selling point for 499usd. So why not buy ds218+ (300usd) from synology and two 4tb NAS hard disks (200usd)- 500 usd? The setup is dead simple. It has mail server backup and media software.
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#319I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution. I wanna get away from "free" email, but I think it requires a more full blown solution, something which offers a client with the polish of gmail.com along with it's excellent spam detection/protection, that can be self hosted on any random computer/server (using docker, or similar) that is very nearly plug and…
> I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution. Sorry, I respectfully disagree. We shouldn't fix email, we should throw it away and replace it. It is almost impossible to have secure email that can't be eavesdropped, even with PGP. Normal people just don't get the need for security and can't bother the hassle of encrypting their email. Also, from an usabi…
I don't think that idea is realistic. While I agree that it would be great if we could find a fast, secure replacement for email, that's not happening.
Signal isn't federated and doesn't allow me to selfhost.
If you wanna start a messaging platform that can become a defacto standard you need to allow anyone to implement it, you also need to prove a value-add aside from security and privacy (which 99% of consumers don't care about) which builds momentum, it also shouldn't piggyback or rely on email in anyway. Much the same way that email didn't require a snail mail letter to create an account.
email is a solution to a communication problem which happens when two people aren't in the room together. It replaced memos, quick phone calls, long form letters, etc.
Instant messaging UX really only addresses the quick phone call and possibly short memos. The UX strongly discourages anything longer than 3-4 lines.
Re: Helm: Personal Email Server
#320I don't like Google reading my email either. But I still use Gmail because I can search 20 years of my emails (including ones I imported from Yahoo mail) instantly. It is surprising no one has mentioned search in this discussion.
Probably because Gmail isn't the only email provider that lets you search. I run my own email server and can search them just fine.