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.
I would say absolutely not.
“is it recommended” implies that the wisdom of crowds (a) exists, b) applies, c) is correct.
What do YOU want to do? That’s all that matters.
I’ve run my own mail server for over 20 years. I enjoy it, and its nice having my mail sit in my basement.
I selfhost everything I want except for email, just not worth it imo.
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?
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.
My first IT job was as mail admin.
I wouldn’t wish that shit on anybody.
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
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.
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.
I 2nd the 2nd paragraph
Same, became quite skilled on exchange server, bad career path…
Everyone should at least give it a try, if only so your decision not to is well informed instead of following cargo cult advice.
Email and DNS. I have self-hosted both and I have no regrets. What I ALSO have is zero desire to do so again in the future.
Honestly, not everything needs to be a firsthand experience to know it’s not something I want to do. Hosting my own email is definitely something I’m good with living through others vicariously.
100% on this suggestion.
i use to setup qmail to host a few domains, works really well, even mail blast is like really efficient. picked up a lot of fundamental about email, dns, ssl along the way.
just make sure you put a good filtering system before the email reaches your server. like mimecast, proofpoint, etc.
nowadays, you can further secure your access to pop3,imap on email server using service like cloudflare tunnel.
I’ve been hosting my own email server for 20 years. Not at home though, fuck trying to do it on a dynamic IP. Also fuck 123-reg for mangling my DKIM and making me think I was going mad.
Nope. Spam mail
I have the Proxmox mail filter in front of my Exchange. It works wonderfully well. No spam gets through.
If you want to do it for fun and learning, ok I guess.
But nobody really does it anymore.
For actual mail that I would use, just go with a mainstream provider.
If you want to actually learn real-world skills, get yourself your own 365 tenant with a single license. Well worth the spend (or free if you can get a partner license).
Don’t mean to be dense, but how does one do this? I tried googling this, but kept getting hits on single versus multi-tenant licensing.
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)
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’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.
If you’re planning to run for political office, I’d recommend against it. /s