Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

mastodon.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#11

Post by comrade1234 »

I've been running my own mail server with several domains for me, my now wife, and friends since 1999. It's definitely changed with time and gotten more strict with things like spf, dkim, dmarc, and reverse dns all becoming necessary over the years.

But it's not that difficult to be honest. Currently my internet provider is init7 and they offer fixed ip4 and set the reverse dns for me which lets me run the server downstairs in the cellar instead of at a colo somewhere (which I was doing for maybe 15 years).

Every now and then I look into moving to a paid service but we have GBs of mail since 1999 and it's just too costly when it's pretty much free for me to host it myself, even taking into account the time it takes for my effort, which is practically zero.

Plus I use my server for a ton of other stuff so it will always exist so I may as well host email too.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#12

Post by prein »

simonjgreen wrote: post #10

I am in favour of the middle ground. Rather than expending effort self hosting email, which while plausible is unequivocally a heavy lift for most, make use of smaller providers such as Fastmail or Protonmail. Just please stop consolidating the internet.

After using gmail for around a decade, I switched to fastmail a few months ago and have been extremely happy with the change.

I still have a lot of accounts associated to my gmail email, but i've been slowly migrating things over when convenient. It has been a much smaller lift than I anticipated and absolutely worth it.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#13

Post by 1718627440 »

JimDabell wrote: post #5

> i think the myth of "you can't self-host email" persists because while it can evidently be done, basically all of the software involved is ancient, baroque, inconsistently documented, requires a PhD in Bullshit to correctly configure, and is almost actively hostile to observation. but this is _annoying_, very different from _impossible_, and fortunately mostly solvable by delegating the annoying bits to an expert u…

> Or you don’t self-host but use a major email provider and don’t have the problem.

Or you just use a mail relay as most VPS providers enforce anyway.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#14

Post by immibis »

JimDabell wrote: post #5

> i think the myth of "you can't self-host email" persists because while it can evidently be done, basically all of the software involved is ancient, baroque, inconsistently documented, requires a PhD in Bullshit to correctly configure, and is almost actively hostile to observation. but this is _annoying_, very different from _impossible_, and fortunately mostly solvable by delegating the annoying bits to an expert u…

Microsoft 365 is corporate business email for corporate businesses. If you're a corporate business, you're already using it, and if you're not then you probably don't want to talk to anyone who's using it anyway. Even if you could pass their filtering, they'd just manually ignore your emails because they only want to talk to corporate businesses.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#15

Post by tsukikage »

graemep wrote: post #6
tsukikage wrote: post #2

IP reputation is a gamble, and there is no recourse. If you're lucky, awesome. But if you're unlucky and switching host isn't an option, you pretty much have to involve a large third party to act your behalf - there is zero appetite in the industry for interacting with individuals. The best solution I've been able to find is to self-host /almost/ everything, but route outgoing mail through Amazon SES. The pricing for…

You can usually switch host. Some have better IP reputations than others. There are quite a few other providers of email forwarding services, although I might look at SES myself if its that cheap as I have issues with hotmail (I seem to be OK with most mail to email on MS hosted email on other domains, oddly enough).

> You can usually switch host

...it took OP 8 months of "rolling the gacha" and waiting to get a clean IP; no mention of costs. Not really a solution in my book. If you're willing to wait 8 months for working email, I put it to you you're actually using some other provider for your life and the thing you are playing with is a toy.

I've been self-hosting my email for a pretty long time. I first started down the reputation rabbit hole when a provider decided to shut up shop after a decade of operation, causing me to lose my lovely fixed IP block with its decade-old clean rep. Waiting/playing around isn't really an option when your email is broken and you need it working /today/ because it's not a throwaway toy - your digital life is tied to it.

Still, as I said at the start, if you get lucky, awesome for you.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#16

Post by commandersaki »

I used to host my own email until switching to Fastmail.

I recall roundcube to be pretty much the best webmail offering back when I was hosting but also severely lacking two important features:

1. Fast search against mailbox folders/labels with say 100k+ messages.

2. Handling multiple aliases, both individual and catch-all, and being able to automatically respond with the correct alias if an email is received using one.

Fastmail webmail handles the above two cases gracefully and its usually the benchmark I apply when evaluating other providers. My understanding is roundcube is severely lacking with search being IMAP SEARCH, and requiring you to enter multiple identities manually for each alias which doesn't permit catch-alls.

But the real reason I stopped running my own mail is that I didn't trust myself with regular backups (even though I still do them via IMAP on occasion) and disaster recovery. I don't think anyone self-hosting really has this figured out.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#17

Post by Gualdrapo »

JimDabell wrote: post #5

> i think the myth of "you can't self-host email" persists because while it can evidently be done, basically all of the software involved is ancient, baroque, inconsistently documented, requires a PhD in Bullshit to correctly configure, and is almost actively hostile to observation. but this is _annoying_, very different from _impossible_, and fortunately mostly solvable by delegating the annoying bits to an expert u…

Or you just don't have/can't afford a device and internet running 24/7.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#18

Post by p0w3n3d »

My experience says quite the contrary: nowadays you have to be a mail giant to be able to send more than one mail. I.e. policy imposed by Gmail and M365 will keep you at bay from delivering the mail in more copies (e.g. to your subscribers), marking you as a potential spammer.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#19

Post by Bender »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #18

My experience says quite the contrary: nowadays you have to be a mail giant to be able to send more than one mail. I.e. policy imposed by Gmail and M365 will keep you at bay from delivering the mail in more copies (e.g. to your subscribers), marking you as a potential spammer.

This may be just cargo culting on my part but when I warm up a new IP for sending mail I first email my mail server from Google, then reply to myself. I do this a few times and then they accept my emails without issue provided I am not emailing many people all at once before the IP has good reputation.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#20

Post by sam_lowry_ »

JimDabell wrote: post #5

> i think the myth of "you can't self-host email" persists because while it can evidently be done, basically all of the software involved is ancient, baroque, inconsistently documented, requires a PhD in Bullshit to correctly configure, and is almost actively hostile to observation. but this is _annoying_, very different from _impossible_, and fortunately mostly solvable by delegating the annoying bits to an expert u…

I self-host my mail server since at least 2001 and while it occasionally requires hours of intense work, I consider it a hobby and a way to refresh Linux System Administration skills.
Post reply on HN