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Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

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Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#11

Post by treffer »

Buy a domain on a service that allows API-based DNS updates.

Put up a RPI at home. postfix + dovecot + roundcube should do the trick.

Add FW forwardings for 80/443/25 (or allow IPv6 to pass through)

Update DNS records every N minutes. (cron, nsupdate, dyndns clients, amazon command line tools....). You will need SPF/DKIM.

The RFC for SMTP says Mail Servers have to retry for 7 days before giving up on mail delivery. This should be plenty for your home server. There are also commercial Mail relay and backup MX services (sometimes even as a free offer for buying domains on website X).

You can backup the SD-Card whenever you want. Your Mail stays at locations you control.

I currently have a root server, but I'm heavily considering "in-housing" those services because of the NSA activities.

EDIT: it's 7 days PS: Some old firewalls block dynamic IPs for mail delivery. I'm not sure how common this is today, especially as SPAM and botnets have evolved a lot.

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#12

Post by alextingle »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #2

I use a managed cPanel host and setup "catch-all" email addresses on my domains to forward to my gmail account. In the event of an outage or Google deciding to delete my gmail account I could change the forwarder or simply begin to use cPanel's built in mail clients. Having your email hosted at your own domain is one of the easiest things to do to gain control over something you normally let somebody else manage. As…

I've run my own mail server for many years, and delivery problems are very, very rare.

DKIM & SPF are marginally useful (at best) for ensuring delivery. You're much better off registering your server with http://www.dnswl.org/

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#14

Post by cmsimike »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #4

I would love to see some instructions to deploy something on a custom server or VPS. I'm currently using NameCheap's e-mail service because setting up the software was too complicated.

I loved this [0] guide. You may not need the encrypted partition part of it so you can leave it out but I've followed it multiple times, all successfully.

[0] http://sealedabstract.com/code/nsa-proof-your-e-mail-in-2-ho...

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#15

Post by alextingle »

escapologybb wrote: post #8
asdasf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do people get these misguided notions about email? You don't need dkim or spf at all, few people check either, and they are just to prevent backscatter. Running your own mail server is trivially easy.

Can you point to a trivially easy set of instructions please? ;-)

https://wiki.debian.org/Exim

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#16

Post by jlgaddis »

Go to work for an ISP. My mail server doesn't cost me anything. =)

On a serious note, I've considered publishing the kickstart + deploy scripts I use for setting up mail servers. I'd have to do a bit of clean-up but I think it would be useful for a lot of people. I'll try to get to that in the very near future.

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#17

Post by lazyjones »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #4

I would love to see some instructions to deploy something on a custom server or VPS. I'm currently using NameCheap's e-mail service because setting up the software was too complicated.

Try something like iRedmail: http://www.iredmail.org

Re: Ask HN: cheap ways to host your own email server?

#19

Post by ivansavz »

jlgaddis wrote: post #16

Go to work for an ISP. My mail server doesn't cost me anything. =) On a serious note, I've considered publishing the kickstart + deploy scripts I use for setting up mail servers. I'd have to do a bit of clean-up but I think it would be useful for a lot of people. I'll try to get to that in the very near future.

Yes plz do that when you have a chance. There are some good HOWTOs out there, but it is always good to see more examples.
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