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Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

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141–150 of 209 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#141

I run my own email. I have my own physical servers, that I built and tested myself, that I'm colocating. They handle both incoming and outgoing, and I've been doing it for so long that there is no previous reputation for the IP addresses I use. In spite of how vehemently some people, Reddit's /r/sysadmin, as an example, want you to NOT host your own and use issues like deliverability as reasons, it's really not hard…

So self-hosting is so easy and problem free, everyone is making up fiction about the problems, and yet in your very first "solution" you tell people to not self-host outbound email at all and to pay money to a third party to solve a lot of the hard parts for you?

> 1) The primary issue brought up is deliverability. If you don't have a static IP, or you don't have control over your reverse DNS PTR, or the reputation of your IP is poor, then pay a company to smarthost your outgoing mail through them. It's a few $ a month, and poof! Problem solved.

By that "logic" self-hosting is easy because I could have a third party handle outbound AND inbound mail, which is essentially standard mail hosting with a custom domain.

Plus you cannot just turn-key create a high reputation, you start out with low and your emails will be dropped into spam.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#142
Yep.

Postfix + dovecot + rspamd on Debian on my own colocated hardware. Have been doing it for over a decade at this point (probably over 15 years)…

Has moved service providers a few times, as I try to stay on small providers with a high level of clue :)

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#143

I run my own email. I have my own physical servers, that I built and tested myself, that I'm colocating. They handle both incoming and outgoing, and I've been doing it for so long that there is no previous reputation for the IP addresses I use. In spite of how vehemently some people, Reddit's /r/sysadmin, as an example, want you to NOT host your own and use issues like deliverability as reasons, it's really not hard…

> then pay a company to smarthost your outgoing mail through them. It's a few $ a month, and poof!

Poof is right. There goes the primary reason people want to host on their own.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#144
post #15

Yes. Using Mailinabox.email on a €3 VPS, since 2016. Have had zero issues with it. I mostly use aerc but recent versions of Roundcube are pretty slick as well.

Do your emails ever end up in people's spam folders, or bounce?

Not that I know of, no. Over the years I've moved it once from DigitalOcean to a local Dutch VPS provider so if I was just lucky getting a clean IP, I was lucky at least twice. :)

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#145
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha ha ha... Perhaps we should have an "Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own DNS?" thread ;) Running BIND is very simple, and there're lots of how-tos and some excellent O'Reilly books, too. You can run your own DNS on a VPS, on a machine on a static IP, or even on a residential address, if it doesn't change too often. If it does change, you can run your primary on your home and have a public machine be a secondary. It opens…

Thanks, I appreciate that a lot! Guess this is my project for over Christmas.

Mail-in-a-box is seriously awesome. I was super impressed by how easy it maid emauk hosting for me after hear all the FUD about housing your own email.

My suggestion is to get a new domain and then try it with that. Once everything works, and your IP reputation is in the clear, you can port your other email domains as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#146
post #69

I don't host my own email server, though I'd like to give it a go one day, even if just as a little sysadmin "adventure". At the moment, I use the really good Migadu Micro plan.[1] It has very nice limits for the $19/y price (half if you're a student like myself), with a pretty lax and understanding policy. They also care about standards and make an effort for you to configure your domain with all the right records.…

I just tested Migadu and it all looks really good in terms of pricing/functionality/company ethos. Love their /about/.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#147
post #93
post #66

I do. For many years I have run a Mail in a Box server hosted on Digital Ocean. I like it very much and have had no problems. MIAB is a wonderful piece of scriptware. The guy promises to follow best practices in all things and, as best I can tell, he delivers. I have rarely had any problem with deliverability or anything else. I continue to do so for several reasons, hosting multiple domains, ad hoc addresses, etc, b…

This is off topic but are you able to go further into how you're doing DNS or is there perhaps a jumping off point that you can direct me to? Oddly fascinated by it and you make compelling points.

Mail in a Box just does this as part of its natural installation. It works with a conventional DNS server but, if you point the domain at its internal one, new email accounts in new domains are up and running automatically.

I agree with the other commenter that running BIND is not too difficult but, if you are going to run a server, MIAB is a good way to kill both birds, mail and DNS.

Also, the MIAB DNS UI is good.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#148
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I appreciate that a lot! Guess this is my project for over Christmas.

Mail-in-a-box is seriously awesome. I was super impressed by how easy it maid emauk hosting for me after hear all the FUD about housing your own email. My suggestion is to get a new domain and then try it with that. Once everything works, and your IP reputation is in the clear, you can port your other email domains as well.

I appreciate that a lot, thank you!

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#150
Exim + Dovecot + MariaDB + Weakforced + Rspamd + ClamAV, Proxmox/LXC + Docker/SOCKS5, DNS (DNSSEC) (PowerDNS), Custom API + React (react-admin), Multiple providers (Linode, Oracle, OVH, Scaleway), Prometheus (ofc), Multiple blocklist sources (via pfsense), Mailbox-centric.

This has evolved since 1996 (!)

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