Self-host your mail server

Posted by geek_at 1 day ago

Self-host your mail server(blog.haschek.at)

74 points | 65 commentspage 3

tossitawayplz 2 hours ago|

Michael W Lucas has a book[0] on the subject too: https://mwl.io/static/books/run-your-own-mail-server.html

throw0101d 3 hours ago||

> But there are other solutions out there like: Stalwart; Mailcow ;Or if you're a purist you can set up your whole server yourself

Another good guide that uses Debian and its standard packages:

* https://workaround.org/ispmail-trixie

(Updated with every release, and upgrade/migration instructions.)

dangerboysteve 3 hours ago|

Some out of the box solutions.

https://www.iredmail.org

https://mailinabox.email/

Krei-se 2 hours ago||

I self-host with telekom business, 2 fixed ip lines fiber and vdsl at home everything from auth ns to mail and web. Its around 85€ for me.

it's still doable and you get the best feeling there is: Living in the internet.

Can recommend 100%.

kimovski 3 hours ago||

Blast from the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...

throw0101d 3 hours ago||

Waiting for a submission of "You should run your own NNTP server" (lots of 'nostalgia' for web forums to come back, so why not this too?).

dangerboysteve 3 hours ago||

What hosting / VPS companies do you recommend? Finding one which allows you to run a mail server is some work.

dwedge 2 hours ago||

A lot of them will let you if you ask, for instance even ionos or ovh. Digital ocean have a blanket ban on port 25 ipv6 but I haven't seen a reason to use them for a decade now. +1 for mythic beasts

hkt 3 hours ago||

Mythic beasts. Their IP ranges are pretty clean and well managed. My deliverability has been fine there for years.

efields 1 hour ago||

Absolutely not.

doublerabbit 1 hour ago|

Why not? I have been hosting colocated email for years just fine.

I pay for a perceptual license of Zimbra.

UltraSane 1 hour ago||

Running your own mail server is easy for receiving mail, but it is very hard to keep your IP from getting on some random blacklist that is impossible to get off.

hkt 3 hours ago||

I've been self hosting since 2012 or so and it is a mixed bag. Deliverability is fine provided you're on a clean IP range, which generally only reputable hosts have.

There was a moment when my son was born and he was in NICU that my mail broke. I just went without for a while. Not ideal.

Since then I've thought: self hosting is nice but hosting cooperatively is probably the best way forward. Democratic control might beat technical control. I'll do it soon, I think: I'd be fascinated to know what people think.

selfsimilar 2 hours ago|

I’m very interested in this approach. I’ve hosted friends’ websites for decades but I’ve been the single-point of failure, so “cooperative” is very enticing.

I’m currently working on a cooperative “lights-on” solution which might be complementary.

LoganDark 3 hours ago|

I've tried self-hosting my mail server, but that means all my outgoing mail will go to Spam on all providers that use reputation-based filtering. In all cases I had SPF, DKIM and DMARC working perfectly, PTR records, etc. but it just doesn't matter. Even a Fastmail domain goes right to spam on my personal account, and they are very very established. It's just not worth it.

dwedge 3 hours ago|

I use a dedicated server and a vps for this, so I get around the residential IP reputation issue. The rest of the problems with deliverability are overblown. In 15 years of doing it on multiple servers, I've had one 2 month period where Gmail was spamming me and one month where Yahoo spammed me. In both cases it stopped without me changing anything, I've always suspected it's brief periods of anti-competition attempts which don't last forever

LoganDark 3 hours ago||

I never used residential IPs. Most ISPs don't even let you set PTR records on those. My problem was that any server at practically any provider would reuse an IP that previous customers have used to send spam in the past. For example you can't hope to send mail from a DigitalOcean IPv4 address without going to spam. Nor from Kamatera. There are probably a few more providers that are basically blackholed because they're so often used for spam. (I don't have experience with providers that don't offer IPv4.) I believe some providers even attempt to block outgoing mail.

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