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Re: "We really should host our own email servers on VPSes"
@alice-sur-le-nuage I use the "MailCow Email Suite" for my setup, which is easy to install and upgrade. It's a professional docker solution and well documented. The only problem is setting the DKIM, SPF and DMARC DNS entries, which you still have to do by hand. But The setup process shows you all the DNS recource records to be made.
I use Alpine Linux as my docker host system which can easily be kept up-to-date. I ran it on a 2 core 8 GB RAM VPS for 2 years and then moved to a 4 core 16GB RAM VPS with larger disk space to be sure. With my setup you can easily serve 20-30 users.
And it's licensed under the GPL-3.0 license so its free software and easy to selfhost.
It's easy to maintain, everything is automated. Around one update a month which is through in 5 minutes and everything is ok. So I spend a maximum of 3 hours on my mailserver in a year and I didn't have any problems whatsoever.
I *sometimes* have problems with mail being flagged as spam, although I'm not listed on any of the serious spam block lists. Netcup is sometimes on the UCEPROTECTL3 block list, which are mafiosi who want to extort mailserver admins. Everybody who uses their blocklists seems not to want to receive email at all. The other thing is Outlook and Gmail - but I don't care if someone has a Gmail adress, he doesn't want my mail.
Sep 05 · 3 months ago
🦂 zzo38 · Sep 09 at 03:38:
I run my own email server for receiving, and use the ISP's server for sending. (Some software calls this "smart host" mode, such as when I set up my email server.) I use Heirloom-mailx as the user agent. (One feature of Heirloom-mailx that I like is that you can pipe attachments into other programs; you do not have to save them into a separate file first.)
I use a separate email address for each service/person I communicate with and set them up in the aliases file; if I receive unwanted messages then I can easily delete those aliases. This works well; I hardly receive any spam messages.
I think there are several problems with Misfin (I have written some criticisms on GitHub and elsewhere). One of them is that there does not seem to be the way to specify that the certificate is a Misfin certificate within the certificate itself; one way to fix this would be to define a X.509 extension for this purpose, but another way might be to add a Misfin URI into the Subject Alternate Name section. This seems more sensible than the existing way, to me.
🦀 AlbertLarsan68 · Sep 13 at 22:17:
I am also using Mailcow for my mail server, and I have no problem sending mails to Gmail and Office-hosted domains, although I took the time to set up everything correctly with SPF, DKIM, DMARK and around 20 DNS records.
I now have virtually unlimited email addresses, and with rspamd already setup for me, I just have to monitor it. I do have a slight problem of false positives, but that may be because I recieved a singluar piece of real spam sind I set it up (don't remember when, but less than a year ago), or that my definition of spam is really specific and does not cover many mails.
👾 fab [OP] · Sep 14 at 09:14:
@AlbertLarsan68 I don't have a high mail throughput, so it's difficult for me to build up trust with Outlook or Gmail. Sometimes my mail gets through, sometimes not.
That doesn't change my strong opinion with them: Don't use Outlook, Gmail or any other proprietary email provider.
🦀 AlbertLarsan68 · Sep 14 at 19:40:
@fab
TBH I tested sending a mail day one of setting up, and despite sending it with a GPG signature and no HTML, it went straight to the inbox.
And I am the only one using my mail server, and the outbound volume is close to an email a month overall, not counting the DMARC automated emails.
Although I have an unhealthy amount of MS-hosted and Gmail accounts, I am slowly moving torwards another host, part of the CHATONS (a group of French service providers), unbon.cafe.
👾 fab [OP] · Sep 15 at 04:40:
@AlbertLarsan68 I checked with an old gmail address years ago, and the mail went strait to the inbox too. I wanted to test today, but google wants my phonenumber and I'm not willing to give it to them.
Without some phone number I can't use my account anymore. Gmail becomes more and more audacious from day to day.
😺 kotovalexarian · Sep 19 at 19:18:
I run my own mail server for maybe two years. No ready-made solutions, just Postfix, Dovecot and OpenDKIM on DigitalOcean. I've configured RDNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC.
No problems with delivery to Gmail, but yes, Outlook bounces because of my IP range which is a stupid move from them and I'm not going to do anything with it. Who ever uses Outlook? The only spam database I'm in is UCEPROTECT level 3, but it's just a scam (why is it ever listed anywhere?)
I don't implement any anti-spam measures. Since the beginning I've had maybe 300 spam and scam messages that I've manually deleted, which is not that annoying (but I'm going to install Rspamd)
The main problem I see is the lack of guides with deep explanation of configuration. This is because not too many people deploy their own email servers. So let's increase demand! Don't be afraid of self-hosting email!
👾 fab [OP] · Sep 19 at 20:20:
@kotovalexarian Yes, UCEPROTECT are mainly scammers who want to extort mail server admins. Those who use their lists don't *want* to receive email.
I use MailCow as my email solution, because it's easy to install, upgrade and maintain. A self setup of postfix, dovecot and all the necessaries scares me a little because it's easy to make mistakes in the configs which may compromise security (at least in my case).
But of course the main thing is to bring more people to selfhost their email servers, so: Good work!
🚀 hedgehog · Sep 22 at 19:11:
Also read Solene's thoughts about this => gemini://perso.pw/blog/articles/email-selfhost-to-protonmail.gmi
👾 fab [OP] · Sep 22 at 22:49:
@hedgehog yes, sad to see anotherone leave the email self-hosting space. At least they doesn't use google or outlook. All in all a VPS is only someone elses computer. I know that. But I need a functioning IMAP and don't have a problem with strong passwords. For security reasons I use MailCow, because it's well maintained and has sensible defaults.
👾 jecxjo · Oct 15 at 01:10:
i have been self hosting my email for over a decade. Honestly the setup and maintenance isn't an issue. My biggest problem is the cost of a VPS. If i ever get fiber I'll host from home but until then i have to shell out money for someone else to run a computer for me.
I would probably drop my email hosting and go paper correspondence for most things if it wasn't such a pain to switch the few things i still use email for to a new address.
We really should host our own email servers on VPSes — I got an email reply from someone who discovered my email 10 days after sending in his spam folder. I'm not sure why - maybe he hosts his domain at Outlook.com or Gmail and it's difficult to build up reputation for these A-holes. Or it may be because my VPS provider is on the UCEPROTECT-L3 blocklist (again). But I really like plaintext email despite all of it's problems. So I think the smolnet/IndieWeb community members should run their own...
💬 fab · 37 comments · 4 likes · Aug 28 · 4 months ago