So, as the topic says, I’m going to set up a self hosted email service for myself, family and friends. I know that this one is a controversial topic around here, but trust me when I say I know what I’m getting into. I’ve had a small hosting business for years and I’ve had my share of issues with microsoft and others, I know how to set things up and keep them running and so on.
However, on the business side we used both commercial solution and a dirt-cheap service with just IMAPS/SMTPS and webmail with roundcube. Commercial one (Kerio Connect, neat piece of software, check it out if you need one) is something I don’t want to pay for anymore (even if their pricing is pretty decent, it’s still money out from my pocket).
I know for sure I can rely to bog-standard postfix+dovecot+spamassassin -combo, and it will work just fine for plain email. However, I’d really like to have calendar and contacts in the mix as well and as I’ve only worked with commercial solution for the last few years I’m not up to speed on what the newest toys can offer.
I’m not that strict on anything, but the thing needs to run on linux and it must have the most basic standards supported, like messages stored on maildir-format (simplifies migration to other platform if things change), support for sieve (or other commonly supported protocol) and contacts/calendar need to work with pretty much anything (android, ios, linux, windows, mac…) without extra software on client end (*DAV excluded, those are fine in my books). And obviously the thing needs to work with imaps, smtps, dkim and other necessities, but that should be implied anyways.
I know that things like zimbra, sogo and iredmail exist, but as mentioned, it’s been a while since I’ve played with things like that, so what are your recommendations for setup like this today?
You may have already read this but I always think back to this blog post about self hosted email:
TLDR;
https://poolp.org/posts/2019-08-30/you-should-not-run-your-mail-server-because-mail-is-hard/
My problem is what happens if my internet goes down when there’s an important email or something. I suppose I could run it on a VPS just in case, but that’s still not as reliable as an email service, nor is it necessarily cheaper.
So I pay for Tuta email. It’s €3/month, supports my custom domains, and generally works pretty well. My VPS costs €4.5/month, and I may get rid of it once my city finishes rolling out fiber because I only need it due to CGNAT. Neither is particularly expensive, but Tuta is really good value for what I get. If my family members want to join, costs will go up (€3/user), so I may consider switching if that happens.
You won’t be able to host email on a residential IP - all of them are on a permanent blacklist. I understand the money argument - and it’s a real argument - but host your own email is just so cool!
Good point. Does the same hold for popular VPS services? I’m behind CGNAT so I need a VPS regardless, but others may prefer to have it at a VPS if they want to mitigate extended service disruption (i.e. equipment dies while they’re on vacation).
No, comercial IPs are fine. You’ll have trouble with some of them - Digital Ocean is a notorious example - where the provider itself blocks outbound port 25 and there’s nothing you can do. I think DO only does that for new accounts.
I myself am running it on Linode - it did get purchased by Akamai a couple of years ago, so I can no longer blindly recommend it - but so far it’s been working fine. One thing I did recently discover was the ability to request a /56 block on Linode - my pre-assigned IPv6 got blacklisted somewhere as at least the whole /64 and simply generating another IP from the same /64 did not help. Getting a fresh block solved it for me, though, and now I know that if this /56 gets blacklisted - it’s my fault. Unless, of course, I get caught up in a /48… 😳
Cool. I’m w/ Hetzner, and it seems they will unblock port 25 if you ask nicely and provide a good reason (and surely hosting your own email service is a good reason). They don’t look at those requests until after your first month, and I’ve been with them for several months now from when I ditched Vultr (had been with them for years) due to their stupid UI-blocking EULA accept popup when they added forced abitration. Hetzner also has forced arbitration, but so far I haven’t been forced to accept new terms in order to continue using services I’ve paid for, so I’m giving them a chance.
So yeah, I’ll definitely try playing with it with one of my domains. I currently use two, and I can play around with a third that’s connected to the domain I use for remote access to my self-hosted things.
And good luck! Hopefully you don’t get screwed over again.
SMTP retries. It’s resilient. If it fails a couple of connections it’ll even let the other side know it happened and when it’s going to retry. If it can’t get it to you in a couple of days it’ll let them know it was not able to deliver.
The rest stands true, hosted Mail is dirt cheap and is more reliable I’m trying to host it in a non-professional capacity.
Ah, interesting. I have two domains, one for personal (family and friends) and one for online crap, so maybe I’ll try moving one to be self-hosted. Or maybe use one of my other domains (I have several).
Well, from personal (professional) experience Email is hard.