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Self-host your mail server

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Re: Self-host your mail server

#111

Post by pigeons »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

Proton doesn't really host a standard email server like imap for you to access on the client side. You have to bridge/proxy/translate it. And Proton doesn't offer any of the convienences like distribution lists that you expect for the past 30+ years.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#112

Post by drnick1 »

I also self-host, and it's not nearly as difficult as know-it-all people on the Internet make it out to be. I rolled things out from scratch using Postfix and Dovecot on Debian as I dislike bloated and opaque containers that hide important decisions from the sysadmin. The main requirements are a clean, fixed IPv4 and an aged domain.

Absolutely zero maintenance has been required since I set it up (unattended upgrades), until recently when Dovecot updated the configuration syntax. Claude ported the config script to the new syntax in about 2min.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#113

Post by levl289 »

vkaku wrote: post #76
levl289 wrote: post #70

I'd run my own email server since the early 2000's - in several forms over time. A VA Linux 2U rack server that I got from work (noisy, overkill), a personal Mac Mini (Frankenstein macport upgrade-resistant), and now a single-node k8s instance with everything neatly managed (an excuse to really dive into k8s from the ground up). I use dyndns to handle IP changes (incredibly rare with Frontier FIOS, actually). I use m…

Just document this for all, simplify the setup but keep the learning :)

I've got a private github repo where all of this is documented. I intentionally kept everything that's secret out of there. Will turn it public, now that I think about it. Thanks, friend!

Re: Self-host your mail server

#114

Post by jjav »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

If you hate it, don't do it, sure.

But I encourage everyone who likes tech and freedom to host their own email. So many reasons.

Some are pragmatic, for example that way you won't ever get locked out suddenly of your entire digital existence when google/microsoft decide to lock you out for no reason and you will never reach support capable of helping.

Some are more about taking a stand for freedom, but that's also worthwhile. The internet was not meant to be owned by just a few behemots who get to control all content. The internet is about distributed peer to peer protocols. Nothing embodies that better than everyone running their own mail server, if you can.

As many say below, if you're worried about the deliverability you can still run your own email server and have nearly all the benefits even if you use a third party relay for delivery.

That said I also deliver from my email server and it is totally fine, the fears are overhyped. Delivery to microsoft is the worst, but even that one just takes filling a form on occasions (been over a year since had to do it last time).

Re: Self-host your mail server

#115

Post by vinay_ys »

Long time ago I used to run qmail for my school (about 2000 users). It was a lot of fun to do as a student sysadmin. Today, I'm tempted to build a minimal mail system for 1-10 users using agentic coding and use it for less critical use-cases like email for shopping/restaurants etc account registration. I wonder if I can get a safe and secure minimal build done completely agnatically without having to directly look at a single line of code.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#116

Post by close04 »

Krei-se wrote: post #81
close04 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running your own email infra is not at the same level as the usual “self hosting”. Not to mention that email can be critical and missing an important email can burn a lot. Why put in that much effort on your free time, and take the risk? You don’t build your own fridge. If it’s important and not your strong suit, pay someone to do it for you.

Have you actually measured delivery rate of some service vs. doing it yourself?

You’re missing the point because you’re thinking like a techie and not like a regular user. But to answer your question, 100% with 0 effort and also 0 direct cost.

In my professional life I managed email infrastructures since 20 years ago. It only got harder.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#117

Post by tarxvf »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

I run self-hosted email for more than 80 domains across three VPSs, almost all of which are one-offs or joke domains and then a handful of old and new personal and business domains.

No deliverability problems. The issues with self-hosting email are drastically overblown.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#118

Post by 4fterd4rk »

This is years (decades?) old but I self hosted my email until everyone suddenly stopped accepting my mail. Has this phenomenon changed? Everyone on my domain was asking me what the hell happened why is my mail not being delivered and I had to do a panicked midnight migration to Google.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#120

Post by GreenVulpine »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

That's not been my experience. I've been selfhosting email on a small provider VPS for years, never had any deliverability issues that I know of. I've set up DKMS, SPF..etc records properly and I send maybe a dozen emails a day at most.
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