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Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

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Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#31

Post by peter_retief »

craigmccaskill wrote: post #27
peter_retief wrote: post #21

I am running a local mail server using cloudflared tunnels and brevo for sending postfix/sendmail/dovecot/ingress setup I am really happy with the setup. (So far)

Nice. Sounds like a neat way to get the best of all worlds. Self hosted email without exposing your IP, leverage a third party with an existing trusted send reputation but still maintain full ownership of the stack. How much effort has it been to keep it running? Glad that it works for you!

It has been running for about 20 days, have a small companies email and web site running locally.

Would like to publish the setup so others can try it out as well.

A fun thing was to route local domain emails locally so they never have to leave the server.

Very little maintenance so far, mustn't speak to soon though.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#32

Post by tclancy »

embedding-shape wrote: post #26
craigmccaskill wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. Don't disagree with anything you're saying here. I should probably tighten up that line. What I really meant to say is that the average self-hoster who just wants to enable a few services to send email doesn't want to run a mail server. Different audiences, different (and both correct) answers. I set out to solve some pretty specific problems of my own but I'm genuinely curious how others have tackled these thi…

> the average self-hoster who just wants to enable a few services to send email doesn't want to run a mail server Maybe I'm confused, maybe the label "self-hoster" is broader than the definition in my mind, but that's exactly what self-hosters want to do, that's why we call ourselves self-hosters, we want to host the stuff we use ourselves :) If I just wanted to "enable a few services" I'd use AWS or whatever the mod…

I think you are confused. I self-host a ton of stuff. One thing I have zero interest in is hosting mail and dealing with all of the configuration and possible timebombs waiting before I can even do the single thing I want the service to do. Instead I pay like $5/month for essentially unlimited emails from any domain I control.

That said, none of it has to do with my own personal email, which has been on Gmail for long enough to drink, so we are probably talking about two different situations.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#33

Post by embedding-shape »

tclancy wrote: post #32
embedding-shape wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the average self-hoster who just wants to enable a few services to send email doesn't want to run a mail server Maybe I'm confused, maybe the label "self-hoster" is broader than the definition in my mind, but that's exactly what self-hosters want to do, that's why we call ourselves self-hosters, we want to host the stuff we use ourselves :) If I just wanted to "enable a few services" I'd use AWS or whatever the mod…

I think you are confused. I self-host a ton of stuff. One thing I have zero interest in is hosting mail and dealing with all of the configuration and possible timebombs waiting before I can even do the single thing I want the service to do. Instead I pay like $5/month for essentially unlimited emails from any domain I control. That said, none of it has to do with my own personal email, which has been on Gmail for lon…

I think the label "self-hoster" might be overly broad in these sort of discussions. Some people considering firing up a VPS and running something like Posthorn "self-hosting" email, just like a bunch of "modern" AI tooling says "local-first" because the CLI runs locally, although all LLM models are remotely called.

Seems to me like there a broad spectrum of "self-hosters", ranging from "I run everything on my hardware in my home" to "I deploy FOSS SaaS software to AWS for us to run", probably neither of these are more/less "self-hosting" than the other.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#34

Post by 0x073 »

crimsonnoodle58 wrote: post #15

> Nobody wants to run a mail server in 2026. We do, and thats why we use Postal [1]. The more SaaS applications that self-host email the better. It forces the big guys, ie Microsoft, to improve their blocklists and not lazily block entire ranges. Yes its work contacting them occasionally, but it keeps the internet open. The alternative is an internet where they control it all. 1. https://docs.postalserver.io/

Does postal still use outdated rails? That's the biggest issue I have with this project as a exposed web service and mail server is for me high risk especially with outdated software.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#36

Post by twooclock »

crimsonnoodle58 wrote: post #15

> Nobody wants to run a mail server in 2026. We do, and thats why we use Postal [1]. The more SaaS applications that self-host email the better. It forces the big guys, ie Microsoft, to improve their blocklists and not lazily block entire ranges. Yes its work contacting them occasionally, but it keeps the internet open. The alternative is an internet where they control it all. 1. https://docs.postalserver.io/

Can't agree more. Thank you for standing up! I'm doing it for 20yrs (currently with mail-in-a-box) and only wish more people were doing it.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#38

Post by tclancy »

embedding-shape wrote: post #33
tclancy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confused. I self-host a ton of stuff. One thing I have zero interest in is hosting mail and dealing with all of the configuration and possible timebombs waiting before I can even do the single thing I want the service to do. Instead I pay like $5/month for essentially unlimited emails from any domain I control. That said, none of it has to do with my own personal email, which has been on Gmail for lon…

I think the label "self-hoster" might be overly broad in these sort of discussions. Some people considering firing up a VPS and running something like Posthorn "self-hosting" email, just like a bunch of "modern" AI tooling says "local-first" because the CLI runs locally, although all LLM models are remotely called. Seems to me like there a broad spectrum of "self-hosters", ranging from "I run everything on my hardwar…

Damnit, sunk by the T.S. Eliot thing again: “It is impossible to say just what I mean”. I host a bunch of services on a handful of machines locally. The main one of which died two weeks ago and is waiting on a new SSD drive so we can properly test whether the Anible playbook Claude put together for me will spin nine or ten services right back up or whether it’s going to be perfected for the third time I have to build the machine.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#39

Post by quality_life »

crimsonnoodle58 wrote: post #15

> Nobody wants to run a mail server in 2026. We do, and thats why we use Postal [1]. The more SaaS applications that self-host email the better. It forces the big guys, ie Microsoft, to improve their blocklists and not lazily block entire ranges. Yes its work contacting them occasionally, but it keeps the internet open. The alternative is an internet where they control it all. 1. https://docs.postalserver.io/

Security is the main worry when hosting email servers, not just of the email service, but also in preventing attacks via email. Antivirus integration is available with Postal. May be it is a good idea to chain multiple antivirus solutions. Instead of just expecting that Google or Microsoft would prevent malicious email, Postal may enable better control and transparency.

Re: Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway

#40

Post by e12e »

0x073 wrote: post #34
crimsonnoodle58 wrote: post #15

> Nobody wants to run a mail server in 2026. We do, and thats why we use Postal [1]. The more SaaS applications that self-host email the better. It forces the big guys, ie Microsoft, to improve their blocklists and not lazily block entire ranges. Yes its work contacting them occasionally, but it keeps the internet open. The alternative is an internet where they control it all. 1. https://docs.postalserver.io/

Does postal still use outdated rails? That's the biggest issue I have with this project as a exposed web service and mail server is for me high risk especially with outdated software.

They seem to be on 7.2, which will get security patches until August this year:

https://github.com/postalserver/postal/blob/8ef89606bc34146f...

https://rubyonrails.org/maintenance

Not great, but better than 6.x.

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