How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#121

Post by mrb » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #103

mrb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« The great thing is that I can dish out unique email address » That's the number one reason I would like to run my own server. (And, no, the Gmail trick of adding "+foo" to the username doesn't satisfy me because spammers know this trick and can strip it.)

Most decent ISPs let you create email forwarders. This is exactly what I use when signing up for a new service. Quickly add a new forwarder and feed the service that email address instead of my normal address. When they turn out to be spammy, the forwarder gets removed.

Do you mean ESP or ISP? Relying on an ISP email forwarder doesn't work because if I move and cancel my service, I lose all these forwarders.

What ESP do you recommend for unlimited (or large numbers of) aliases indistinguishable from individual email addresses (such as ycombinator4853@foo.com facebook843983@foo.com but not john+ycombinator@gmail.com john+facebook@gmail.com)?

Edit: fastmail's standard $50/yr plan offers 600 aliases. This might be good enough. I've created online accounts at 371 different services over the last 20 years.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#122

Post by grinsekatze » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:19 PM UTC

This is an interesting write-up, but doing it like this files like way too much work.

I have been using mailcow[0] for years now and it does all of this for me and works great. The UI is beautiful and intuitive. And setting up mailcow literally takes a few of minutes, since the project was ported to docker. Highly recommend it.

[0] https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#123

Post by floren » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #107

floren wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I can't quite parse it out from the page, maybe one of the Fastmail users can tell me. I can set up 100 domains and 600 aliases, but if I want my wife to have access to hername@mydomain.com, does she need her own $5/mo account?

> I can set up 100 domains and 600 aliases, but if I want my wife to have access to hername@mydomain.com, does she need her own $5/mo account? You can add her as a user to your account (so she can use your domain) and it costs an additional $5/mo for the separate user yes

Makes sense, thanks!

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#124

Post by goerz » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

I've been pretty happy paying Fastmail to run my email server for me.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#125

Post by RandomCSGeek » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

workthrowaway27 wrote: post #54

I've done this before. It's a pain in the ass. You have to run several different programs each with hundreds of configuration options, make sure the different programs can communicate with each other properly, make sure your email doesn't get flagged as spam, and be your own sysadmin. All for marginal benefit. It would be great if someone wrote a program handling all of this that could be deployed as a single binary…

There seem to be at least a couple of projects on GitHub on this topic. Eg. https://github.com/aimxhaisse/docker-mailz Now how many of them actually work is a different question altogether.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#126

Post by creeble » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

bedros wrote: post #104

What webmail client people tried with their own setup that they like?

Roundcube seems to own it. Not that many Foss clients to choose from, and RC seems most robust.

The only feature I've ever longed for is a simple way to include a non-reply email in another email message. There's probably a plugin for it.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#127

Post by dest » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

workthrowaway27 wrote: post #54

I've done this before. It's a pain in the ass. You have to run several different programs each with hundreds of configuration options, make sure the different programs can communicate with each other properly, make sure your email doesn't get flagged as spam, and be your own sysadmin. All for marginal benefit. It would be great if someone wrote a program handling all of this that could be deployed as a single binary…

https://yunohost.org/ provides a turnkey email solution, based on Postfix, dovecot et al.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#128

Post by brlewis » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

I have an old server that I need to migrate. It uses exim4 and pipes email to programs for certain addresses, and needs to send out automated email for forgotten passwords, etc. Is it worth moving to Postfix or something better? This is the part of the migration I look forward to the least.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#129

Post by ivm » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #41

I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible. Actually it's fine until it's not. Then your email doesn't work and you could be missing out on important communications. And then you're scrambling to figure out how the spammers managed to exploit your setup this time. And you have to learn a tonne of crap in order to manage it... and the text files!…

Absolutely horrible – I tried to setup Postfix for my friends to hide Gmail behind their organization's domain.

Configurations were incredibly unfriendly and tedious. Despite all anti-spam measures, Microsoft was blocking their IP according to some private spam blacklists. Then they couldn't send emails to some ancient government server in Guatemala because of encoding incompatibilities.

I ended up moving them to the free MailGun plan. It took me 2 hours instead of 2 days.

Re: How to Run Your Own Mail Server (2017)

#130

Post by cat199 » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #39

How to run your own mail server: Don't. How to run your own mail server (for experts): Don't. I say this as someone who has run my own mail server for 20+ years. Now, if you absolutely have to get off Google, and the other available hosted options don't work for you, then this article looks like a good start. I'd add roundcube for web access and letsencrypt for SSL. One thing you'll never really get, in my experience…

> One thing you'll never really get, in my experience, is good spam handling.

Not quite the same calibre, but really, SpamAssassin+RBLs tuned a smidge too high plus a user whitelist is pretty darn good. Scripting something that auto-adds to whitelist based on sent mail would do even better (but is exactly the kind of 'fun' that people don't have to deal with using 3rd party service). I've heard you can do better with dspam.