Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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It's been set up for almost a decade at this point, it's shockingly low maintenance once it's all set up and going. It is a pain to figure out Postfix's and Dovecot's fairly arcane configuration files, but smooth sailing afterwards. It's been a long time since I've even got a mail rejected/not make it to the recipient's inbox.
100%. I’ve been running my own mail server for 10-15 years now and you’re spot on. I’ve wanted to migrate it to a more modern platform but I’m loath to relive the process of configuring postfix and dovecot. DKIM/SPF and Let’s Encrypt certs for IMAPS were also a bit of a headache to get sorted, and warming up the sending IP so gmail would stop sending me to spam… but once that’s all sorted it’s been very very hands off. I log in once in a blue moon to update it but otherwise it just sits and does it’s thing.
I self host one of my emails on my VPS. I can't even remember the software I used it's been that long. One issue I have is spam. Have you found any way of controlling that?
I have my mail server set up as a catch all so you can send to anything at my domain and it’ll land in my inbox. I use this to create usage specific addresses. If it’s something I know will produce spam, I just dev null anything going to that address. I can then also track where a spam source originated. For friends and family who email me regularly; they also know to append the current year to my email address, this allows me to rotate my email address every year.
I also run spam assassin and implement greylisting as well as blocking IP ranges from countries I know I’ll never receive legitimate mail from… it’s been an evolution.
Oh wow that catch all thing sounds like a really handy alternative to disposable emails. Thank you! I will also look into spam assassin. Logged into my VPS to remember what software I'm using - dovecot and postfix.
EDIT: installed and configured SpamAssassin. Thank you, that was easy!
I also can't recommend greylisting enough. If you haven't already enabled it in postfix I strongly suggest doing so. It's one of the easiest ways to reduce spam. By simply bouncing emails from new sources the first time and forcing them to retry, it cut my spam tremedously.