Is it useful to have your own mail server as a non-business? Just a private person. Configure SMTP and IMAP for it, sync with outlook I think.
Yay or nay, waste of time? What are your thoughts?
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No.
My first IT job was as mail admin.
I wouldn’t wish that shit on anybody.
I remember that job and also building the server myself from scratch. Qmail, Squirrelmail, Dovecot and all that. It lasted about a year until we bought something as it was hell. Now days with IP reputation and spam filters - even if the server ran, you’d never get anything delivered outbound.
OP, the most I would do is an SMTP server that relays through Gmail for delivering alerts from monitoring systems. Anything else is pain.
Mailcow.email
Mailinabox
I finally built my own mail server because if something broke my alerts would sometimes hit the maximum limit for a non-business gmail account and not get delivered.
I learned a lot, but it is a pain in this day and age. I had to set up SPF and DMARC records to get it to deliver to gmail. I guess the next adventure is DKIM.
Assuming you’re using postfix as an MTA, it’s not too hard to get OpenDKIM up and running.
My mail admin experience is pretty dated these days, but I followed this guide back in the day and had it working.
Unfortunately I’m using Citadel, which doesn’t have a lot of awesome documentation.
Guess I get to learn some more.
I 2nd the 2nd paragraph
That’s all we do for clients that need on-prem equipment to scan that don’t support integration with Gmail/outlook online. Spin up an SMTP relay for things like scanners, alerts, Databases, etc. and just run that straight into Google/Microsoft Mail servers.
Our latest migration was with MailEnable and going to Exchange online, which was a collosal mess.
Same, became quite skilled on exchange server, bad career path…
same, hire a service, to deal with spam and spam list is hard.
i use proxmox mail gateway, i host both the gateway and mail server as vms on the same machine
As a fun project, yes.
As an actual day2day email, no.
Unless u have actual redundancy with 24/7 uptime and static IP, it may caused missed emails. Even if u do, the price is a factor u may need to consider.
Missed emails? Don’t clients retry?
Unless there’s a strong academic reason, it’s probably more work than it’s worth for the average person. It becomes a vector for attack, and there’s external infrastructure that has to be maintained as well (DNS, SPF, DKIM, etc)
I selfhost everything I want except for email, just not worth it imo.
have been running my own mail server(s) since early 2000. If Hillary can, you can :)
but of course there are downsides as well, you need to expose services from the outside, you need to allow SNMP inbound, you need to deal with DNS and various mail security enhancements, deal with anti-spam and do mailware/virus scanning etc. on top of that you would need to consider some kind of “high” availability. if your server goes down = no emails…
for me its worth it, my exchange server have been running for the last 10 years or so, I publish both webmail and use the outlook and/or mail in my phone.
I have multiple domain (10+) and run my own DNS.
The only thing I can’t do is send emails… I have to rely on my ISP for outgoing emails, but that’s a good thing as generally my emails are not marked as spam as they comes from a trusted source.
setting up email is easy, configuring it so you don’t get caught in spam filters, and you don’t get a ton is a full time job. I did it for awhile and just didn’t find it worthwhile any longer.
If you’re planning to run for political office, I’d recommend against it. /s
I’ve run my own mail server for over 15 years. If you’re going to do it, put it on a VM at a reliable cloud provider, such as AWS. You wouldn’t want your email to go down while you’re on vacation for a week with no way of fixing it. You need to make sure you use a static IP that you keep forever, because your mail server builds reputation and the IP must not have any reputation of spam that has landed it on block lists.
It’s not difficult if you let reuse someone else’s hard work to make it secure and keep it updated. This project is fantastic: https://mailinabox.email/
Would I recommend it? It’s more rational to bring your own domain to have it hosted by Microsoft or Google, but doing it yourself is more fun and flexible, and possibly cheaper depending on how many users and domains you will be hosting.
How many of you all here, using a hosted solution remembered to setup DKIM on their custom domain? hostname alignment can aid in email deliverability, i believe.
For reference, if you were using office365 you would take the steps outlined here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-authentication-dkim-configure?view=o365-worldwide
Lastly… if you don’t bother, any good reason to skip the domain alignment step?
I set one up for a while and it was a royal PITA! I have since switched to a managed email account using my own domain. So much less trouble. It’s just not worth it in my opinion.
The biggest problem you’ll run into is sending email from your residential internet connection. Most, if not all, residential ISPs either 100% block or severely throttle port 25 outbound traffic to cut down on spam. Even if you’re able to find an ISP that doesn’t block 25 outbound, if the reverse zone lookup indicates that it’s a residential ISP most spam filtering solutions are going to flag all of your messages as spam.
Always fun to do if learning but in production even for personal i would recommend you pay for something like startmail or mailfence and use their custom domain features.
i learned exchange on my own and even had dreams of doing multi tenant exchange until exchange online came and jerked off all over that dream
I’m using gmail with my own domain and I still get my email filtered out. You would need to warm your IP address for years to not get into spam folders in most places. Not to mention the uptime issue. I would not recommend. You may try fastmail or some similar service instead.
Worst idea ever. Just pay somebody $10 a month to host your domain and let them suffer lmao