I was thinking about how to improve my email situation, because at the moment I am using an address of a commercial mail provider, which obviously brings some concerns of lock-in.

While fully self-hosting the email is an option, I am a bit wary of this, because having a working email is very critical and I do trust the commercial providers to give better uptime and reliability than my old server in the closet. Does anyone have experience hosting an email service and what is it like/could you recommend it?

The other option that I am more inclined to is having the email hosted by some cloud provider, but using an address under my personal domain name. The point would be of course that I could change the email provider while keeping the address. Which providers supporting this could you recommend? What is the process like linking a domain to an email host?

  • berber@feddit.orgEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    you are correct in being wary of self-hosting email, i cannot recommend it. a lot can go wrong. besides downtime (already pretty bad by itself) i have known cases of domains and/or server IPs being blacklisted/spamlisted on multiple big mailservers (microsoft, google) because of bad administration, effectively killing the self-hosted setup.

    you would definitely want a static IP (as opposed to updating DNS entries all the time), a solid spam setup, and multiple failsafes, meaning not just data backup, but also mechanisms for preventing downtime like secondary machines. it really is only worth it if multiple people make use of it and you have multiple dedicated admins, in my opinion. but in that case, i think it can be very cool.

    as others have pointed out, a good (and in some sense the canonical) option is to use something like mailbox.org with your own domain, or other providers, or even a webhosting package from netcup or hetzner or similar. these are all solid, and you have professional support.

    side note: downside is, your data there is more snoopable, less so with something like proton. but that shouldn’t be your biggest worry, since emails always exist not just on your server, but also on the other side of the communication, and you have no guatantees for privacy there. e2ee (like pgp) is what you would need in that case.

    • activistPnk@slrpnk.net
      1·
      1 day ago

      side note: downside is, your data there is more snoopable, less so with something like proton.

      Can you elaborate? AFAIK, Protonmail only gives e2ee in 2 rare situations:

      • Both parties use PM
      • The non-PM user has a PGP key and the PM user is competent enough to add the key to their PM address book. (This is where Hushmail is superior to PM, but HM is not gratis)

      In all other scenarios (no e2ee), PM traffic and data-at-rest is just as exposed as conventional non-PM.

    • Gobbel2000@programming.devOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought, and if dynamic DNS is a problem then that already rules out self-hosting for me.

    • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      you would definitely want a static IP (as opposed to updating DNS entries all the time)

      Also any IP from a dynamic range is going to make spam filters lose their shit

      • activistPnk@slrpnk.net
        1·
        1 day ago

        True, but sending from a static IP that is linked to you yields less privacy. I’ve decided: fuck these email recipients who demand I compromise privacy in order to give them the convenience of relying on IP reputation. Sure, google and MS servers refuse email from me, but I prefer that anyway. I use postal mail for such recipients (and yes, that’s most recipients).

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          I get where you’re coming from but nowadays a dynamic public IP is ‘dynamic’ in that it can change but rarely if ever will unless you switch ISPs or equipment.