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?

  • Suzune@ani.social
    6·
    10 hours ago

    I’ve been hosting my own email server having 4 domains (one is business-related) for 6 years. I don’t have any problems, because I know what I do.

    In case it’s a help. The stack is: Postfix (SPF-support), Dovecot (Sieve), OpenDKIM, OpenDMARC and rspamd. I also recommend fail2ban, because an open infrastructure is hammered on very often.

    Of course TLS is needed, so nginx with acme.sh as combo does the job fine.

    Backups are also essential. I like restic. CLI tools are automated very easy.

    I don’t think, it’s much. My setup is very generic, but maybe it’s already too overwhelming for some people.

    • a14o@feddit.org
      5·
      9 hours ago

      I have a very similar setup and it’s been running without major hiccups for years.

      I’ve been hearing the same tales of caution ever since I got my hands on that SUSE CD-ROM. I’m definitely much more careful when touching the setup compared to other stuff I self host, but it’s not impossible or anything.

      It’s not something one should hurry. Read up on all the standards and documentation, set them up step by step with a throwaway domain. Avoid the big no-nos from the very beginning: Make sure to never accept relay submissions from unauthenticated users, and don’t bounce anything off-server.

      It’s been a fun journey for me, and I always find it a bit sad when people who might be interested to learn are immediately discouraged. If you feel like giving it try, go for it!

      • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
        3·
        9 hours ago

        Thanks, that brings some optimism! It is indeed a common wisdom that email is almost impossible to self-host. If you have some good information to dispell that myth, it would be great if you could make a post about it here!