For folks that are running a self hosted mail service I wonder if you’d mind sharing your choice of software and perhaps deployment? I’ve been using docerized Mailcow for years on a small Linode instance but I’m always wondering what else is out there.
How in the world do you justify running a mail server today? There are so many issues when you aren’t at scale. And almost everyone gives it away.
I use iRedmail, and they’re pretty great. The only sort-of downside is upgrading can be a pain if you don’t keep up with it as they only provide notes on how to go from minor version to the next minor version so if you get a couple years behind it’s easier to reinstall than to upgrade.
Before that I “rolled my own” using Roundcube, dovecot+postfix, and Maildir for storage. It worked well for ~10 years.
It doesn’t take much effort to me, I can know that I’m the only person logging and storing my side of my email (obviously the people I send/recv to/from can do what they like with their messages).
If it’s free then you’re the product. Same reason I avoid google and apple services where possible. If I didn’t run my own I’d be paying for someplace like protonmail or lavabit.
It may be because I’ve been running mine for a while, but all of the major providers seem to recognize that I’m legitimate and I don’t have problems with delivery which is what most people seem to complain about. On the spam side sometimes it’s fun to get spam and see what it is they’re trying to do. If I don’t like it then I can always tune the spam-assassin rules a bit and make it go away. I did need to set up DKIM and SPF correctly, but that was a couple hours 4 years? ago.
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I too used to roll my own with my own an in-house email server, but got weary of security updates, hardware issues, periodic network outages, etc. Like you I’m not a fan of Google and Apple email accounts and policies. While I use an outward facing gmail email address, all mail is forwarded to my Fastmail account and all of my outgoing email (SMTP) is sent directly from Fastmail.
Fastmail’s servers are located in Australia and for $90 a year, I get 100 gigs of storage (I too am an email retentive junkie, I have every email I’ve ever sent or received back to 1998 - over 40 gigs worth). In addition to IMAP and SMTP, I also use their CarDAV and CalDAV servers for contacts and calendar. These all sync across all my mobile devices too. I have been with Fastmail for almost five years and was able to upload all my email archives to them very quickly.
Five stars highly recommend - www.Fastmail.net
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Give it away (comes with almost every hosting package, ex. linode, etc.
I don’t do google crap. I’m no product:) Except when I communicate with all the product people, as you do too.
Depends on what for… Lately I’ve switched back to an exim setup directly (because of some weird routing and custom handling I want to do). For a basic one though iRedmail is really popular with most of the people I work with.
Email servers aren’t really that hard to secure as long as you don’t allow an authenticated relay type systems, have some monitors and metrics, and set up SPF/dkim handling correctly. (Which is also why I prefer exim over postfix mostly)