this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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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?

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[–] milan@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Well i kinda did that when i started selfhosting way too much a number of years ago... it can be quite annoying trying to get your server out of blocklists (if you need to change servers, because of ip reusing from hosters) and unless you use something like Servercow, it is easy to break things and it kinda hard to find proper tooling for selfservice and stuff.. nowadays i mostly keep it like it is because i don't want to deal with trying to migrate people to a different setup. It's okey and most of the time it just does it job, but it doesn't give too much joy :P

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 3 points 2 years ago

Hah. Not the fun DIY project I hoped it would be. Oh well. Yeah, don't want to get to the point of being responsible for other people's data.

[–] Tempiz@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nope. It can’t really be self hosted anymore, as having a residential IP is a straight track to the spam folder. It can be done if you also pay for a mail relay service, but then what’s the point of self hosting when you need to rely on a cloud service anyways.

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 3 points 2 years ago

Some dreams are born dead.

[–] taur10@venera.social 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@DidacticDumbass I use hosted email from Polaris Email, $25/yr, and my domain from Porkbun at $5 for the first year, and access the mail through Thunderbird on phone and computer.

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[–] njaard@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] PlexSheep@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I run my own Mailserver on a vps with mailcow dockerized. Was a real pain to set up, even through it mostly works right now.

DNS stuff isn't just some A or AAAA records, also txt stuff reverse DNS and much more. As the others said, that's completely impossible with a regular ISP.

I'm on some dumb blacklist because my IP is obviously in the IP range of my hosting provider, and some lists generally block all vps ranges.

Now imagine the following: your bank wants to contact you and your primary mail is selfhosted, for some reason they block your IP (yes outgoing blocks, those idiots) and you don't get some real important mail. Or your server is down for maintenance, certificate issues, so on.

The best solution is most probably letting a professional email holster take care of your domain, for email at least. Protonmail offers that but the problem I have with them is that they don't allow a regular login through thunderbird, restricted to their own software.

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[–] PM_ME_FLUFFY_SHIBES@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

I used to but all the tweaking with DKIM etc rules took a bit too much of my time. Now I'm using Zoho Mail to host email on my own domain.

[–] DyXen@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Hello, I'm selfhosting mailserver with mailcow in docker container. Its easy to setup. I have static IPv4 and domain. Thats all.

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago

It seems so simple. I started playing around with Docker, which seems so solid. But I was also turned off by Docker desktop, so it seems like it is becoming something that is slowly monetizing every feature that used to be free. It makes sense I guess, more users more costs. Actually, I think they are only monetizing docker hub, so... I don't know.

I have also seen podman brought up as the thing everyone is migrating to, so I think I will try it.

Proxmox -> VM -> Docker -> Mailserver seems to be the way to go. Not like email needs baremetal performance or whatever.

Thank you for sharing your setup!

[–] givingsomelove@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I just decommissioned the mail server I was running, because I didn't have the capacity with the rest of life to keep on top of it. Mailu was my choice of suite, and it was really great once I figured out how to get it behaving nicely behind my reverse proxy. For the most part it was low maintenance, but I would occasionally have issues with cert renewal and subsequently my email clients would stop connecting. I didn't have issues with non-delivery once I set up the various DNS records and did a lot of test emails that I could mark as not junk to various providers. I ended up switching to using icloud+, which includes email with a custom domain. Would I host my own email again? Possibly if I really need more than 6 addresses. But icloud+ costs less per month than the power consumption of the tiny server I was running mailu on over 3 days. Which is... Not insignificant in the current financial climate.

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah. I need to stop pretending. I am not that tech savvy, just aware of tech from sites like Lobste.rs and the fediverse of course.

[–] givingsomelove@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I will say that I initially started hosting mine as a learning exercise, so from that point of view I think it's totally worth trying out, even if you don't keep it long term. :)

[–] DidacticDumbass@lemmy.one 3 points 2 years ago

For sure, there is value in learning how something you use all the time likely take for granted actually works.

A bit of a tangent, but the amount of emails my mother gets because she is always signing up for shit and giving out her address to anyone who asks is mind numbing.

Systemic implementation of security can only go so far, people really need to be more critical of the information they give away.

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