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Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

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151–160 of 209 posts

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

#151
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…

I have also been using mailinabox for over an year on Hetzner. While on rare cases emails I send will not go through, I will always receive emails. So I am slowly moving my user accounts email addresses from gmail over to my own domain.

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

#152
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?

Been using mailinabox for over a year. My emails to the big email providers make it through. Last one that didn't make it through was when I sent an email to a friend's amd.com address.

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

#153
Yes, I have a physical dedicated server that is colocated that handles all of my email (along with websites, FTP and a few other services), and a second server in my home that acts as a secondary email server with a nicer UI that gathers up all the email from the main server and lets me read it locally either on laptop, desktop or phone. I have a static IP on my main server, and I've had that same IP for going on 20 years, so the reputation is of the IP solid.

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

#154

I'm self-hosting since 2005, moved from Courier to Postfix/Dovecot/Rspamd to dual server Maddy/Dovecot (replicated)/Rspamd + legacy Postfix (to be scrapped when I find time) setup. I've changed IP addresses and domains over time, and everything was perfectly smooth. Both machines are my own hardware, on residential ISP connections on different continents (with some tunnels for one machine where ISP is less friendly).…

What client do you currently use? I'm looking for a bearable web client.

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

#155
I host my own email on a DigitalOcean server using Mailu. Works great and allows me to receive *@mydomain.example.com, which is super useful for generating throwaway emails on the fly for different companies. If they send me spam I block the entire address, and it's easy to see phishing attempts because they come in to the wrong address. It's definitely not trivial to set up and maintain but I recommend it if you're into self-hosting things.

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

#156

I'm self-hosting since 2005, moved from Courier to Postfix/Dovecot/Rspamd to dual server Maddy/Dovecot (replicated)/Rspamd + legacy Postfix (to be scrapped when I find time) setup. I've changed IP addresses and domains over time, and everything was perfectly smooth. Both machines are my own hardware, on residential ISP connections on different continents (with some tunnels for one machine where ISP is less friendly).…

What client do you currently use? I'm looking for a bearable web client.

Apple’s stock apps on macOS (it’s pretty good, fast, stable, has almost all the features I need) and iOS (sucks but I haven’t found anything better), Thunderbird on Windows and GNU/Linux (sucks badly in terms of performance, but everything else is much worse in some regard).

Rainloop for the web, but I almost never use it - it’s a backup option for me, I’m mostly hosting it for friends and family.

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

#158
Yes, using yunohost on a VPS. Selfhosting mail and many other services without any hassle. No delivery issues yet.

But honestly, without an easy solution like yunohost I wouldn't attempt to selfhosting personal mail even I already know how to do on different platforms.

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

#159
post #6

Primary mailserver at home. Secondary MX in a VM at one of the services; it only stores mail if primary is down, otherwise relays immediately. Dovecot and Postfix, SpamAssassin and ClamAV; greylisting, SPF and DMARC but not DKIM. I handle mail for my family, some friends, and a few mailing lists.

If your primary has a tendency of going down an inconvenient times (like mine had), I highly recommend spending an hour (or three, if we’d include reading on the subject) setting up Dovecot replication with dsync.

It’s pretty easy over a TCP connection (SSH for some reason didn’t work for me, so I’ve set up a Wireguard VPN between my hosts - also allows me to replicate KeyDB for Rspamd without having to set up a PKI for it), and works like a charm - backup MX receives mail if primary is down, and uses local Dovecot replica for delivery. When primary comes back online dsync makes sure they’re both consistent copies.

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

#160

I have custom domains forwarding emails to a couple of gmail accounts. It's a PITA. I still have issues receiving emails. Especially from financial institutions. (Wells Fargo emails just... stopped. So I gave up and setup a gmail just for them.) I have issues sending emails from my custom domain. IRL I always have to explain that yes, my email address is YourCompany@MyDomain.com, but no, I don't actually work for You…

Wells Fargo recently (couple months ago) had mailserver issues where they failed to realize they had actually delivered the email. They sent me about 20 copies of each email, then after a week sent an notice how they cannot send me an email . Even though they’ve got their 250 proper from my MTA.

But they had fixed it since then, now emails work fine. I suspect they had some bug on their side, because I haven’t seen anything suspicious on mine (and nothing had changed on my side).

Idk what was that.

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