Figure I’d ask here, but I’m looking to set something up for email in the future, I’m looking into custom domains so that if something happens with one email account, then I have more security in mind to pick up from there as opposed to being screwed.
I know that fully self hosting email full stop is usually not recommended, so I’m up for any advice anyone has on that end.
Do you mean buying your own domain, and forward email sent to it to an email provider?
A lot of email providers have that option (with paid plans). For example
Basically that yeah, assuming that’s the best way to go about it anyway.
If you don’t want to fully host it yourself (which I think it’s wise), then it’s a good solution.
If privacy is important to you, ProtonMail has a good reputation, but I haven’t been keeping up with the latest developments in the area (there might be other providers that suit your needs / budget).
I use proton mail and love the new addition of Proton pass. It makes spoofing emails for junk/sign ups super easy too.
Can integrate with Thunderbird via proton bridge too. Would recommend.
@WandererLagomorph799 There are many providers who allow you to bring your own domain. The ones I know of are Disroot, mailbox.org and skiff.com. The main advantage of using your own domain is also that if you ever want to change your email provider, you can do so without changing your email address. So even if you choose the wrong provider at first, it’s not really a problem.
Disroot support never responded to my request, even though I supported them monthly so I looked elsewhere. No complaints with mailbox.org
@skankhunt42 Your request for your own domain? I never used Disroot, but I’m thinking about moving, because mailbox.org keeps trying to force me to a more expensive plan with less features than my current plan.
Yeah. My first request was to add a couple GB to my nextcloud and get a couple aliases. Then I wanted to move my mail to them and nothing. I followed up a couple times.
How is mailbox bothering you? I have the cheapest that allows a custom domain and I’ve never seen anything about moving to a different plan.
Mailbox.org is great, I like that you get caldav and carddav as well. They’re very privacy conscious as well. It’s true the recent price increase doesn’t make me happy either. The service is great and I couldn’t find a better deal so I stick with them. Except for the price everything is perfect imho
I recently bit the bullet and bought in to mxrouting’s lifetime account. 10GB, unlimited domains, unlimited accounts, “forever” (for the remainder of the time mxrouting exists) for the semi decent price of $100.
I’m interested in this. I want to host my own Lemmy, Bookwyrm, Matrix, etc. servers but I find that not having access to appropriate password resetting is a deal breaker for not only me but for anyone I would like to join. I looked in to some email services but couldn’t find one that wasn’t charging more than it would cost to run the actual website
With a Lifetime plan, at least it’s a one time purchase and I don’t have to have yet another subscription eating away at my bank account
How do you like the service so far? Any issues with emails being marked as spam or being undeliverable?
No issues so far, though I’ve only had it for a couple weeks. From the sounds of it, they go above and beyond to make sure they stay off spam lists, going so far as to cancel accounts that are being used for marketing.
You do have a 300 outbound email limit per email account per hour, so that’s something to keep in mind. But I’d never butt up against that personally. But it could be an issue if you happen to get a lot of users, or someone decides to be a dick with “forgot my password” spam.
+1 for mxroute. I’ve been using them for several years with no trouble whatsoever.
Also comes with NextCloud you can use for CalDAV and CardDav. It also comes with DNS, basic web hosting and ftp but you’re limited to 10GB total.
Thanks for pointing this out - I may do this to move off Private Email, since that’s just the one address.
I use Mailcow myself and as long as you follow all the necessary anti-spam steps (DKIM/DMARC/SPF/etc.), it seems to work just fine.
If you’re not into all that, I would definitely recommend Proton’s hosted option. Other hosted options are also just fine for most people (even Google and Microsoft will provide you with affordable and reliable email hosting) but those are generally run by Big Tech™. On the other hand, supporting the little guy is nice and all but it also leaves you open to hacks and business continuity risks if the hosting market ever takes a turn for the worse.
is mailcow the kind of thing where you can host your email server yourself without paying any reoccurring fees beyond your domain name? Im new to homelabs too and I’ve been wondering how to get started with that for a while. proton would be great for me if it was free but I’m really against reoccurring payments, I don’t even have Netflix lol
Keep in mind you’ll also need a static IP address somewhere (price varies). Whether that’s on your home connection or a vps, you’ll likely run into delivery problems periodically.
Mailcow is a system to set up a fully-featured mail server through Docker. It takes care of configuring various mail servers, setting up a web interface, and comes with a web admin interface that lets you add domains/accounts/etc. and comes with tools that will generate DNS records for you. It also includes Exchange ActiveSync, which means that you can sync contacts/calendars through it as well if your mail client supports that protocol.
You’ll still need to pay for a server somewhere, and quite a chunky one at that; with clamav and full text search, you can easily run into trouble with 4-6GB of RAM. You can get that number down by disabling optional features, of course.
Hosting from your home IP is tricky (most residential IPs are on blacklists and have been for over two decades). If you can get a different IP routed to your server you can still make it work (i.e. grab a free VM from a VPS provider with an unlimited free tier like Oracle and set up a VPN to forward the necessary ports) but I don’t know how well Mailcow’s tooling deals with setups like that.
The biggest downside to self-hosting email is that you need to make sure you keep backups, and that you’re stuck with the TLD. If you were one of those people who used .af for funny domain names (risky.af and such, or English people using .eu domains), you’ll have noticed how relying on a domain can be a problem. Make sure to use a domain within your local jurisdiction so you won’t lose access!
Assuming that you do want to fully self host, my go-to is a postfix+mariadb+postfixadmin+spamassassin+opendkim stack. With rainloop as a webmail if required.
Avoid exim like the plague
I like Mailinabox
You can use it in the cloud or fully self-host on your own hardware if you want. (Assuming your ISP allows this)
I would go selfhosted and use a mai-in-a-box solution. Easy to setup, handles all the spam DNS settings etc and if you put it on an ip segment that is generally spammer-free, then you should have a fantastic solution (I habe used it myself for many years).
I host my own domain and DNS and point to a web hosted provider.
I was pretty happy with Proton mail, but moved because I wanted to provision more inboxes and the price per inbox didn’t scale great, for me.
I needed something that allows for unlimited aliases as I’m creating an email address for every service I sign up to.
I’m using UberSpace for 5€ a month which also allows for hosting websites. Very happy with them.
Not advice, can’t fully vouch for this company, but they’ve got a great price. https://purelymail.com/pricing
