All this new excitement with Lemmy and federation has got me thinking that maybe I should learn to run my own instance. What always comes up though is how email is the orginal federated technology.
I am looking at proxmox and see that is has a built in email server, so now I am wondering if it is time to role my own.
I stopped using gmail a long time ago, and right now I use ProtonMail, but I am super frustrated with the dumb limitation of only having a single account for the app. I get why they do it, and I am willing to pay, but it is pricey and I don’t know if that is my best option. I guess it is worth it since ProtonVPN is included. It looks like they are expanding their suite.
Is it worth it? Can I make it secure? Is it stupid to run it off a local computer on my home network?
It’s a great learning exercise but challenging to get right and ensure your deliverability and basically impossible from a residential-grade IP address (if you have a business class static IP at home you could pull it off).
I ran an email server for decades but gave in and pay to host my email now.
If google decides you’re a bad guy it’s such a pain to crawl back from that and I prefer my email to just work.
Yes, I still run my own email server. It is not for the faint of heart, but once it’s configured and your IP reputation is clean, it’s mostly smooth sailing. I have not had any deliverability problems to date, initial setup/learning period notwithstanding.
If you’re not scared away yet, here are some specific challenges you’ll face:
- SMTP ports are typically blocked by many providers as a spam prevention measure. Hosting on a residential connection is often a complete non-starter and is becoming more difficult on business class connections as well (at least in the US, anyway).
- If you plan to host in a VPS, good luck getting a clean IPv4 address. Most are on one or more public blacklists and likely several company-specific ones (cough Microsoft cough). I spent about 2 weeks getting my new VPS’s IP reputation cleaned up before I migrated from the old VPS.
- Uptime: You need to have a reliable hosting solution with minimal power/server/network downtime.
- Learning Curve: Email is not just one technology; it’s several that work together. So in a very basic email server, you will have Postfix as your MTA, Dovecot as your MDA, some kind of spam detection and filtering (e.g. SpamAssassin), some kind of antivirus to scan messages/attachments (e.g. Clamd), message signing (DKIM), user administration/management, webmail, etc. You’ll need to get all of these configured and operating in harmony.
- Spam prevention standards: You’ll need to know how to work with DNS and create/manage all of the appropriate records on your domain (MX, SPF, DMARC, DKIM records, etc). All of these are pretty much required in 2023 in order for messages from your server to reach your recipient.
- Keeping your IP reputation clean: This is an ongoing challenge if you host for a lot of people. It can only take one or two compromised accounts to send a LOT of spam and land your IP/IP block on a blacklist.
- Keeping up with new standards: When I set my mail server up, DMARC and DKIM weren’t required by most recipient servers. Around 2016, I had to bolt on OpenDKIM to my email stack otherwise my messages ended up in the recipient’s spam folder. -Contingency Plan: One day you may just wake up and decide it’s too much to keep managing your own email server. I’m not there yet, but I’ve already got a plan in place to let a bigger player take over when the time comes.
Yep. I’ve hosted my own mail server since the early oughts. One additional hurdle I’d add to you list is rDNS. If you can’t get that set up, you’ll have a hard time reaching many mail servers. Besides port blocking, that’s one of the many reason it’s a non-starter on consumer ISP.
I actually started on a static ISDN line when rDNS wasn’t an issue for running a mail server. Moved to business class dsl, and Ameritech actually delegated rDNS to me for my /29. When I moved to Comcast business, they wouldn’t delegate the rDNS for the IPv4. They did create rDNS entries for me, and they did delegate the rDNS for the IPv6 block. Though the way they deal with the /56 IPv6 block means only the first /64 is useable for rDNS.
But, everything you list has been things I’ve needed to deal with over the years.
Yeah, I totally forgot about reverse DNS. Good catch. I probably left out a few other things what with the repressed trauma of it all. lol.
I had to deal with Suddenlink business, and they were (somehow) surprisingly worse than what you described for Comcast (I didn’t know that was possible, TBH). Suddenlink wouldn’t even unblock the SMTP ports at all let alone delegate rDNS to our static.
I used to run my own mail server about 2 years ago but unfortunately the spam got so bad I didn’t have the time to manage all the filters. I moved over to ProtonMail since I can still use my own domain there. So I guess I would say it’s not really worth it also it really sucks if your power is out and not having access to sent your power company a strongly worded email.
E-mail was the first “thing” that got me off of Google (to Proton & then currently Tutanota) but is really the last remaining service I not have self hosted.
I have always read about how difficult and time consuimg it was to run your own mail server, but I felt like I needed to experience it myself. So I purchased another domain and followed the instructions on https://mailinabox.email/.
I am using a small VPS on Hetzner and I have to say the experience has been almost flawless so far. I did need to have my new domain taken off the Domain Block List, but Hetzner gave me a clean IP and defaults to blocking port 25 outbound to prevent spam (simple ticket to open, once account is 30 days old and paid).
I know I’m still early into this journey so far, but it has been really simple and I plan to test this secondary domain for a few months before moving onto it full time.
As an avid self hosted of literally everything else, I can say it has been a lot of fun learning so far!
Hell yes, I love the enthusiasm! I just got a domain, which is giving me 3 months of email, so that is great. I feel like Tutanota is the most honest email service when it comes to advertising privacy, and they do some stuff that Proton definitely does not, like make recovery impossible without a key, and use no other method.
My next step is to get a VPS, and Hetzner is the name I have seen pop up the most. I will use that.
Thank you!
Yes I haven’t had any real issues with Tutanota, but it seems like the common trend is that they, and everyone else, is raising prices for things I dont really need. But at the same time, the things I do need, I.e. accounts with enough storage for my family, will start costing more than the price of renting a VPS alone. So for me, its partially privacy, but also ownership of my data and cost benefit analysis where I am now trying to make CERTAIN that my self hosted email is worth the cost savings.
That is the thing, I am willing to pay for email, because then the incentives are real to the provider to follow best practices for privacy and quality of life, but the pricing blows up too quickly due to to features I will never use. I need something more granular.
I am also looking at Disroot and Posteo, which I like because the have hardened ethical principles driving their services, and that is worth supporting.
Also to add on, I didn’t like that tutanota requires their app.
It’s bad out there when it comes to hosting your own email server. This blog post shows somebody’s experience in detail, and it’s worth reading. https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html
It’s all so sad.
That was a sobering read. We all feel victorious when we see big tech fail after they wronged their users, but fundamental technologies that actually run the world have already been lost, and may never be recoverable for egalitarian use.
Gotta say, I’m really happy to see so many people here actually talking about doing it! Usually I see a lot of fear-mongering about self hosting email. You can do it, though, and I think we should encourage more people to do so! It can be a little tricky to set up at first because there’s a lot of different things you need to configure and make talk to each other — I haven’t used them but there’s things like mail-in-a-box that are supposed to make this easier. But the most important thing is to make sure you set up SPF, DMARC, and DKIM DNS records (and set up DKIM signing for your outgoing messages). I’d recommend setting the ruf and rua tags in the DMARC record so you get mailed reports from other mail servers (can help you debug if your mail is getting rejected). I’d also use these tools:
https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.learndmarc.com/
Happy mailing :)
Thank you for the encouragement! I am inching my way towards building a server, and I am thankful for all the tips and suggestions I got.
I am starting to think that if email is the hardest to self-host, then perhaps more people should try it. It is worthy to take regain indepedence and autonomy of technology, even if it seen as a lost cause.
Yeah, I hope to get something running soon, just so I can say I did it.
I wish you luck! Some people claim to have troubles sending emails with Outlook blocking whole IP blocks, but it’s a little unclear how much of a problem this actually is to me… it’s a little hard to know if outlook is actually doing this or if people have misconfigured mail servers… In my experience people complaining about this often have a broken dkim key or something. Maybe it’s worth signing up for https://www.dnswl.org/ too, but I’m not sure how big of a difference it makes.
I will definitely look into those things if I run into troubles!
I host my own mailserver, and to be honest it’s pretty painless. Usually I just let it run without giving it any thought. It’s on rare occasions that I need to put a bit of work into improving the inbound spam scanning.
Selfhosting does need quite some knowledge of the software stack and several additional protocols to set them up correctly to get your outgoing email delivered. Also, like already mentioned in another comment, you absolutely need an IP address from a non-blacklisted subnet (I think most VPS providers will be okay, residential definitely not).
My software stack: Arch Linux (soon NixOS), Postfix, Dovecot, rspamd, opendkim, opendmarc.
Additional techniques configured: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC.
As you can see it’s quite a lot, and I’ve been doing for more than 20 years now, so my opinion can be a bit skewed. I’d say go for it if selfhosting is a hobby.
I have been learning about it, and what really has motivated was seeing my current provider ProtonMail have an anniversary sale, and just having the least affordable pricing just to get a couple features I need. I have never been a fan of cloud storage, I have never needed an online service to handle my calendars or whatever else.
I need to do do this out of principle.
You are right, that is a lot of software in use. However, I have been given a lot of recommendations. I got my own domain name. I am almost ready. I just need to setup a few more things. I am taking a long time to do this, I got distracted with other self-hosted applications, but I do want to try running a mailserver.
Hosting a mail server is really easy. Making sure Hotmail, Gmail and others accept your emails is a nightmare.
I don’t host my own email, I just delegate my email management to a small provider.
I am learning this is the case. I think I may be better off running a Nextcloud instance, or similar suite using better applications for stuff like file sharing, which is more important.
I am learning this is the case. I think I may be better off running a Nextcloud instance, or similar suite using better applications for stuff like file sharing, which is more important.
I am learning this is the case. I think I may be better off running a Nextcloud instance, or similar suite using better applications for stuff like file sharing, which is more important.
Yes, and I love it.
I use mailjet as a proxy on outgoing emails so that I get fewer of my sent messages rejected, which works.
It was a pain to setup but it’s treating me very well.
Neato! I was so concerned about the logistics of sending and receiving emails, it never occurred to me that I could get fancy and make nice looking emails. All I use is text, yet I can do so much better.
No, I only write plain text emails, mailjet only has ip addresses that are generally not blocked by the big providers and they do all the DCIM stuff.
I get that, I will definitely need to choose a service that helps to not get sending blocked. Still, I was amused that templates were such a big selling point.
I’ve been self-hosting e-mail for over 15 years and hope to continue doing so. Although it’s being made increasingly difficult by big tech players. I wrote about it here: https://proycon.anaproy.nl/posts/rant-against-centralising-e-mail/
Aren’t you afraid about some important email getting discarded without you knowing about it? Or about unnoticed downtime which results in missed mails?
When I am sending? Well, once things are set up properly I’m pretty confident that things arrive (though nobody can ever be 100% sure of course). I also tend to mail to the same recipient domains a lot, like for work and hobby projects, so once those are tested you get pretty confident.
Unnoticed downtime is usually quickly noticed, I depend on my server for a lot of things. Senders are often resilient enough to keep things in their queue and try a few times. There’s also a fallback MX registry at my (3rd party) DNS host which will queue stuff in case the primary MX goes down.
I do. Run about a half dozen email servers for various organizations. Been doing it for almost a decade for some. Other than initial setup pain, I’ve had zero problems others describe. I have used (and still run) docker-mailserver, mailcow, mail-in-a-box and mailu. All are lovely in their own way and fit various use cases better than others.
This is so encouraging! For sure it takes a level of technical proficiency and experience, but any technology that has been around for decades has been simplified and automated in one way or another. In retrospect, it is ridiculous to think that all these email providers could exist if they could not overcome the stranglehold of Google and Microsoft, so it must be possible for individuals to do it too,
Not worth the hassle - best compromise is to get your own domain but use a provider like fastmail to host it.
If they turn sour you can move your domain to another mail host.
I think this is the solution I was thinking about in the first place. I was just musing about it being part of a home lab. I have to consider whether this solution is is better than just paying for secure email.
There are advantages to having your own domain - you can use something like vendor8832@yourdomain.com so each site you sign up to gets their own unique “to” address, that way you can easily send their mail to trash when you dont’ need to deal with them anymore, and will also let you know what company had a data breach if that unique email address starts to get spam.
This is what I want! I want that granular control of having an email address compartmentalized for specific kinds of communication. I mean, I know it is something provided by basically all email providers, but I don’t know, for sure there are limitations. A unique address for each website seems like such a smart thing to do, on top of being stingy with giving out my email address.
Protonmail at certain levels gives you simple login with unlimited aliases. Something to look into. I love it and have been with them for years.
I did for a couple years, but moved to mailbox.org a while ago. The effort was much to high to save a few bucks and there is no real upside to it. E-Mail is a troublesome mixture of different protocols from the internet stone age held together by chewing gum (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS, database or file storage, maybe ActiveSync, Web-Mailer, …)
Even when everything is up and running there is always maintenance to keep your SSL certificates up to date, update your incoming spam filter technique, keep other mail providers assured that you are not spamming (DKIM, etc.), keep all the different system services (see above) up to date and interoperable, etc. and every few years when you want to move to a new server, provider or Linux distro you start it all over again.
Damn, it is so bizarre that email of all things would be the least operable by tech savvy individuals. Someone linked an article that explains it, and it truly is depressing. Like, it makes me not want to even have email… which is not really possible if I want to be employed. Eh, it’s not like I DON’T already have free email accounts, I just don’t always like the decision my provider makes.
Well, there are plenty of providers out there there should be one that suits you. Having a domain of your own with DNS access and letting the provider doing the hosting is not (so) hard and gives you the flexibility to switch any time.
That is cool. Everytime I have created a new email account, it has been an island. Never learned to preserve emails… Well, except the one time I use Thunderbird. I should set that up again. Maybe it would solve my issue of multiple accounts??
In any case I like consolidation and I don’t like logging into a website everytime if I can avoid it.
I used to. I had a docker-mailserver. It was good. But I moved house and changed ISP. I couldn’t set up the reverse DNS on my address, and Gmail was blocking me, so I had to switch to a hosted mail server (namecheap private email).
It’s a shame, syncing is noticably slower, and I only get one mailbox, but oh well. Just keep on using GPG.
I feel like I’ll eventually have to… mailbox.org upped their prices from 1 EUR/mo to… whatever they are right now, and on top of that I’ll still need a VPN to access heinous sites such as pastebin (welcome to Turkey), which is another 5 EUR/mo.
For that money I could get an alright enough VPS from Hetzner and spend some time getting everything configured properly, and have bonus flexibility in terms of hosting anything else I might want to host.
The problem with this ofc is that no “turnkey” mail bundle seems to give a shit about resource usage as far as I’m aware, and I’m worried they’ll end up hogging all the server resources for themselves.
