As the title reads, I really want to begin hosting my own email server again. I’m sick of the poor quality of the service providers out there. Damnit all I want/need is a reliable IMAP/SMTP provider. I spent 3 hours getting off of Hostinger and on to Zoho. I just hope Zoho won’t suck. It’s great for now but we’ll see.
Is the prevailing advice still not to bother with self-hosting email?
Hi, email self hoster here, though with a unique circumstance. Self hosting email is fine given you know what you’re doing or have a unique circumstance like I do, I run my own ASN (internet thing allowing you to directly connect with other internet networks like your ISPs) and you can obtain your own IP addresses that you control yourself, meaning you lose the issue of ISPs giving you crap IPs, or your hosting provider being blacklisted because of someone else. I never get sent to spam as a result. Self hosting email is a doable thing, you just need more control over whatever IPs you use than most people will have at home
So self hosting yes, but not for the average person with a residential ISP IP address.
There’s no shortage of people who will tell you it’s okay to self host email… in fact, you’re probably not hearing all of them, because some will inevitably get routed to spam.
lol may I ask what you have to do to get that amount of spam? I at most get one spam mail per month to my server and I have some addresses listed as contact information on my public websites.
You can get a mailprovider that allows custom domain names for very little money. I use Mailbox.org and it works fine. Also used Protonmail previously which also works.
Mailcow includes rspamd which learns spam using bayes analysis. Just move messages to the junk folder and it learns, after a month or so of training I get very very little actual spam, and no false positives.
Honestly, if you want it, go for it. It’s a good learning experience!
I’ve been running postfix+dovecot for 10 years now and I’ve had very very few issues, I wouldn’t know it’s not Gmail or some other big provider. Kinda pain to set it up, especially if your provider hands you an IP that’s been used for spam previously, but it’s been smooth sailing since for me. Mails always delivered, DKIM/DMARC and everything.
I have self-hosted my own emails many times. Up to having three SMTP servers with failsafe option at DNS.
It’s super nice, but I would never self-host SMTP again. It’s a nightmare. I had to email or open a ticket at most ISPs despite my clean IPs. Most ISPs simply blacklist all IPs unless they are major email providers already.
My advice is go for it but let SMTP be handled by who will deal with these frustrations. MXroute is a great choice and it’s cheap.
I’m sure that’s the prevailing advice… I’ve been self-hosting mine for a while now. It’s been lovely. 0 issues outside of some “special” users… Who also are family… So they’re just “special” anyway.
Been very hands off for me. And when shit goes “wrong” (I can think of 2 major incidents in the past couple years?)… I get the opportunity to actually fix it… rather than sitting on my thumbs crying that my emails don’t work.
I also host my own mail and there’s been little issues.
Microsoft is a pain in the ass if you’re in an IP space they don’t like like DigitalOcean. Which is ironic because they have the worst spam filter by far in the industry.
If you want to get through to everyone you will have to:
Use a “good” TLD ( not .to, not .xyz, …)
Don’t use cloud platforms that are regularily used for spam (mostly DigitalOcean)
Use SPF
Use DMARC
Use DKIM
Use a PTR record
Don’t make an open relay by accident
Use proper ports and certificates
Register an abuse account at the big players (Google, Microsoft, …)
Don’t use an dynamic IP
Keep it up to date
Minimize downtime
I can’t recommend mailcow enough, it makes setting up a mail server a breeze.
My experience with hosting mail was very good. I host my mail using Mailu, which is just a docker compose file and premade scripts for the usual mail stack software (Postfix, Dovecot, Nginx etc.).
I hosy it on my home network using a raspberry pi. I score 9.8 on mail tester and my mail rarely ever lands in spam.
In total I spent maybe 3 hours setting everything up including my domain and 2 hours debugging issues. I honestly recommend self hosting mail.
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Hi, email self hoster here, though with a unique circumstance. Self hosting email is fine given you know what you’re doing or have a unique circumstance like I do, I run my own ASN (internet thing allowing you to directly connect with other internet networks like your ISPs) and you can obtain your own IP addresses that you control yourself, meaning you lose the issue of ISPs giving you crap IPs, or your hosting provider being blacklisted because of someone else. I never get sent to spam as a result. Self hosting email is a doable thing, you just need more control over whatever IPs you use than most people will have at home
So self hosting yes, but not for the average person with a residential ISP IP address.
There’s no shortage of people who will tell you it’s okay to self host email… in fact, you’re probably not hearing all of them, because some will inevitably get routed to spam.
I have my own domain hosted on proton. Followed all the guides and my emails are still nearly always routed to spam…
From someone who never stopped: YES.
99.95% spam, and no amount of filters and training can do as good a job as Gmail (as much as I hate and would like to get away from Gmail)
I want to turn it off so bad, but fomo, that one email from that one person I knew 25 years ago who only has that email address … fml.
lol may I ask what you have to do to get that amount of spam? I at most get one spam mail per month to my server and I have some addresses listed as contact information on my public websites.
Well, the address is over 20 years old… it’s on many, MANY lists, lol.
You can get a mailprovider that allows custom domain names for very little money. I use Mailbox.org and it works fine. Also used Protonmail previously which also works.
If you want to turn it off, can’t you just use some free service to forward messages to your new address?
I actually had it running that way for a while but a couple/few/don’t remember years ago Google started rejecting all the mail :-(
Mailcow includes rspamd which learns spam using bayes analysis. Just move messages to the junk folder and it learns, after a month or so of training I get very very little actual spam, and no false positives.
I also use mailcow with rspamd and I have seen like 2 spam mails in 3 years. And even those were marked as suspicious.
Combined with aliases I don’t really have to bother with spam or leaked addresses anymore.
What are you doing to get spam? Somehow simple RBL check + pipelining block most of it for me.
Well, the address is over 20 years old… it’s on many, MANY lists, lol.
Yeah + spamassassin, I have probably two or three spam mails a YEAR that end up in my inbox.
Honestly, if you want it, go for it. It’s a good learning experience!
I’ve been running postfix+dovecot for 10 years now and I’ve had very very few issues, I wouldn’t know it’s not Gmail or some other big provider. Kinda pain to set it up, especially if your provider hands you an IP that’s been used for spam previously, but it’s been smooth sailing since for me. Mails always delivered, DKIM/DMARC and everything.
Here’s a helpful site to test deliverability: https://www.mail-tester.com/
Mine scores 10/10
E: Also, surprisingly zero spam despite my addresses being quite public.
I have self-hosted my own emails many times. Up to having three SMTP servers with failsafe option at DNS.
It’s super nice, but I would never self-host SMTP again. It’s a nightmare. I had to email or open a ticket at most ISPs despite my clean IPs. Most ISPs simply blacklist all IPs unless they are major email providers already.
My advice is go for it but let SMTP be handled by who will deal with these frustrations. MXroute is a great choice and it’s cheap.
I’m sure that’s the prevailing advice… I’ve been self-hosting mine for a while now. It’s been lovely. 0 issues outside of some “special” users… Who also are family… So they’re just “special” anyway.
Been very hands off for me. And when shit goes “wrong” (I can think of 2 major incidents in the past couple years?)… I get the opportunity to actually fix it… rather than sitting on my thumbs crying that my emails don’t work.
I can’t think of any major incidents with Gmail since I opened my account in 2005.
From a different Lemmy post I wrote a month ago:
I also host my own mail and there’s been little issues.
Microsoft is a pain in the ass if you’re in an IP space they don’t like like DigitalOcean. Which is ironic because they have the worst spam filter by far in the industry.
If you want to get through to everyone you will have to:
I can’t recommend mailcow enough, it makes setting up a mail server a breeze.
https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized
Use the MXToolbox to verify your server(s).
https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx
My experience with hosting mail was very good. I host my mail using Mailu, which is just a docker compose file and premade scripts for the usual mail stack software (Postfix, Dovecot, Nginx etc.). I hosy it on my home network using a raspberry pi. I score 9.8 on mail tester and my mail rarely ever lands in spam.
In total I spent maybe 3 hours setting everything up including my domain and 2 hours debugging issues. I honestly recommend self hosting mail.