All this new excitement with Lemmy and federation has got me thinking that maybe I should learn to run my own instance. What always comes up though is how email is the orginal federated technology.
I am looking at proxmox and see that is has a built in email server, so now I am wondering if it is time to role my own.
I stopped using gmail a long time ago, and right now I use ProtonMail, but I am super frustrated with the dumb limitation of only having a single account for the app. I get why they do it, and I am willing to pay, but it is pricey and I don’t know if that is my best option. I guess it is worth it since ProtonVPN is included. It looks like they are expanding their suite.
Is it worth it? Can I make it secure? Is it stupid to run it off a local computer on my home network?
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Yes, I still run my own email server. It is not for the faint of heart, but once it’s configured and your IP reputation is clean, it’s mostly smooth sailing. I have not had any deliverability problems to date, initial setup/learning period notwithstanding.
If you’re not scared away yet, here are some specific challenges you’ll face:
- SMTP ports are typically blocked by many providers as a spam prevention measure. Hosting on a residential connection is often a complete non-starter and is becoming more difficult on business class connections as well (at least in the US, anyway).
- If you plan to host in a VPS, good luck getting a clean IPv4 address. Most are on one or more public blacklists and likely several company-specific ones (cough Microsoft cough). I spent about 2 weeks getting my new VPS’s IP reputation cleaned up before I migrated from the old VPS.
- Uptime: You need to have a reliable hosting solution with minimal power/server/network downtime.
- Learning Curve: Email is not just one technology; it’s several that work together. So in a very basic email server, you will have Postfix as your MTA, Dovecot as your MDA, some kind of spam detection and filtering (e.g. SpamAssassin), some kind of antivirus to scan messages/attachments (e.g. Clamd), message signing (DKIM), user administration/management, webmail, etc. You’ll need to get all of these configured and operating in harmony.
- Spam prevention standards: You’ll need to know how to work with DNS and create/manage all of the appropriate records on your domain (MX, SPF, DMARC, DKIM records, etc). All of these are pretty much required in 2023 in order for messages from your server to reach your recipient.
- Keeping your IP reputation clean: This is an ongoing challenge if you host for a lot of people. It can only take one or two compromised accounts to send a LOT of spam and land your IP/IP block on a blacklist.
- Keeping up with new standards: When I set my mail server up, DMARC and DKIM weren’t required by most recipient servers. Around 2016, I had to bolt on OpenDKIM to my email stack otherwise my messages ended up in the recipient’s spam folder. -Contingency Plan: One day you may just wake up and decide it’s too much to keep managing your own email server. I’m not there yet, but I’ve already got a plan in place to let a bigger player take over when the time comes.
Yep. I’ve hosted my own mail server since the early oughts. One additional hurdle I’d add to you list is rDNS. If you can’t get that set up, you’ll have a hard time reaching many mail servers. Besides port blocking, that’s one of the many reason it’s a non-starter on consumer ISP.
I actually started on a static ISDN line when rDNS wasn’t an issue for running a mail server. Moved to business class dsl, and Ameritech actually delegated rDNS to me for my /29. When I moved to Comcast business, they wouldn’t delegate the rDNS for the IPv4. They did create rDNS entries for me, and they did delegate the rDNS for the IPv6 block. Though the way they deal with the /56 IPv6 block means only the first /64 is useable for rDNS.
But, everything you list has been things I’ve needed to deal with over the years.
Yeah, I totally forgot about reverse DNS. Good catch. I probably left out a few other things what with the repressed trauma of it all. lol.
I had to deal with Suddenlink business, and they were (somehow) surprisingly worse than what you described for Comcast (I didn’t know that was possible, TBH). Suddenlink wouldn’t even unblock the SMTP ports at all let alone delegate rDNS to our static.
Despite my willingness to self-host almost everything, e-mail remains the last frontier for me. Keeping abreast of standards, keeping up today, avoiding implications in abuse and many, many smaller issues abound … and that’s despite my fixed IP and ISP willing to set up a reverse-DNS for me.
Instead I’ve gone with a paid email provider that I’m REALLY happy with.
I originally did but the maintenance burden was killing me. Then last year Proton unified their subscription with VPN and Mail (also upgrading my Proton VPN only subscription to Proton plus) and from there I decided to just go all in on Proton mail. I integrated my domain to Proton mail and never looked back.
Same. One day I realized that emails where toi important for beeing host by an amateur me. 😉
It seems like the most sane solution. It is not that expensive for the basic tier given my needs and how important email is for daily functioning. Plus, the perks are pretty damn awesome. I have been paying for mullvad, who are solid, but the more I learn about VPNs, the more it feels like warm blanket than real armor, at least for how I use it.
ProtonMail does have some sketchy history that someone pointed out, but I also think that it is really hard to set up a service that offers every feature and not make a concession somewhere.
Well the use case for VPN for me is more into traffic routing than staying secure. Sometimes I experience slow downloads but when I connect to the right VPN endpoint, it speeds up / regain back the download speed. The only reason why I picked ProtonVPN of all places is because it was (and still is) one of the VPN services that was isn’t bought over by a tech conglomerate that buy and stacks up VPN services (https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships/protonvpn)
As for ProtonMail being sketchy and honeypot is as old fear mongering as time itself. If you are sketchy about how ProtonMail works, just remember that ProtonMail requires a bridge client for external clients like Outlook and Thunderbird because of its e2ee nature (therefore not compatible with traditional email clients). The bridge client code is open for you to see as well (https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge) and you can even compile it yourself if you want to.
Interesting. I had read some of those accusations before, but all the time I was thinking they ain’t google or microsoft, they can’t just give away user data and get paid for it. They need to be clean (enough) to have the growth they did without pissing off most of their users.
The explanation for only being able to use their own client makes sense. I don’t see how they can make attempts at privacy while using established tech that does not care about privacy.
It’s bad out there when it comes to hosting your own email server. This blog post shows somebody’s experience in detail, and it’s worth reading. https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html
It’s all so sad.
That was a sobering read. We all feel victorious when we see big tech fail after they wronged their users, but fundamental technologies that actually run the world have already been lost, and may never be recoverable for egalitarian use.
Yes, and I love it.
I use mailjet as a proxy on outgoing emails so that I get fewer of my sent messages rejected, which works.
It was a pain to setup but it’s treating me very well.
Neato! I was so concerned about the logistics of sending and receiving emails, it never occurred to me that I could get fancy and make nice looking emails. All I use is text, yet I can do so much better.
No, I only write plain text emails, mailjet only has ip addresses that are generally not blocked by the big providers and they do all the DCIM stuff.
I get that, I will definitely need to choose a service that helps to not get sending blocked. Still, I was amused that templates were such a big selling point.
It’s a great learning exercise but challenging to get right and ensure your deliverability and basically impossible from a residential-grade IP address (if you have a business class static IP at home you could pull it off).
I ran an email server for decades but gave in and pay to host my email now.
If google decides you’re a bad guy it’s such a pain to crawl back from that and I prefer my email to just work.
a bit late to the party here, but I didnt see iRedmail mentioned. been using this to host my own email on a VPS for a little over a year now and its great. for me its worth, you can absolutely make it secure, and its not stupid to run it off a local computer. unfortunately most ISPs make it insanely difficult to host on your home network.
How do you send mail with it? I’ve played around with using Postfix and never had luck with the outbound mail side, largely because my ISP blocks port 25 and I couldn’t ever figure out how to authenticate with public SMTP relays (like Gmail’s, for instance) such that they will actually let me send emails from my domain.
the documentation for iRedmail covers your question. I abandoned trying to host locally because my ISP blocks all email related ports.
Can you point me to where it describes sending email? I can’t seem to find that mentioned. When you say you abandoned trying to host locally, did you move to a more “traditional” public email service like Outlook or Gmail or did you continue selfhosting, just on a VPS or similar? If the latter, are there any services you recommend?
Okay, what a program. THIS does everything. I mean, just on paper it does it all. Thanks for the suggestion.
I’ve been self-hosting e-mail for over 15 years and hope to continue doing so. Although it’s being made increasingly difficult by big tech players. I wrote about it here: https://proycon.anaproy.nl/posts/rant-against-centralising-e-mail/
Aren’t you afraid about some important email getting discarded without you knowing about it? Or about unnoticed downtime which results in missed mails?
When I am sending? Well, once things are set up properly I’m pretty confident that things arrive (though nobody can ever be 100% sure of course). I also tend to mail to the same recipient domains a lot, like for work and hobby projects, so once those are tested you get pretty confident.
Unnoticed downtime is usually quickly noticed, I depend on my server for a lot of things. Senders are often resilient enough to keep things in their queue and try a few times. There’s also a fallback MX registry at my (3rd party) DNS host which will queue stuff in case the primary MX goes down.
No. But I did consider it. Multiple times.
Why not? I’m too scared! Email is the one service that let’s an attacker nuke each and everything. It’s still the most central/crucial service that almost any service relies on. If I lose access to my mail account, I lose access to pretty much every service.
As much as I would like to host this myself, I simply do not feel comfortable to do it.
AAAHHH!. Now I am scared too.
So much to consider it is dizzying.
Pretty much for this reason for me as well.
I’m a tech hobbyist and I’ve run/currently run things like Nextcloud, Jitsi, Matrix, XMPP, etc. But all that seems pretty small-scale. However with e-mail, nearly everything relies on it, and from the headaches I’ve heard about from those who self-host e-mail, it just seems like a perfect way to screw yourself over 😅
I run my own email server using Mailcow. It works well.
However, I do not even attempt to directly send outbound email. It’s very difficult to get your server trusted by the major providers, especially Microsoft (who are very picky about email servers). I have an account with MXRoute (which is an email provider) but only use it for outbound relaying. Inbound emails go directly to my server.
For what it’s worth, MXRoute is a great provider to consider if you want to move away from the large ones (Google, Microsoft, etc) but don’t want to self-host.
Outbound mail seems to be what defeats this entire project. Still, I do enjoy that there are many options to make everything work.
There’s various outbound mail providers, and some have free plans. For example, SMTP2Go is free for 1000 emails per month, and Mailgun is free for 5000 emails per month. What you’d do is set up your own email server, and configure it to relay via SMTP2Go or Mailgun. Your client systems don’t need to know this - they just send their emails to your server, which then relays them to the relevant service.
I use Mailcow and all of this is configurable in its web UI. No need to edit config files.
Nice. That is way more emails than I ever deal with in a month. Maybe in a year. I am really conservative with my online stuff, mostly because I hated the idea of managing so much crap even if it is something I want.
So, I am going to play with Mailcow, Mailinabox, and iRedMail.
Good choices! I also tried those three. Mailcow was my favourite but maybe you’ll like one of the other ones better. Mailcow uses Docker (which I prefer compared to installing software directly on the system) and has a nice admin panel. They’re all good choices though.
I keep saying it but I need to get familiar with docker, especially to run all other kinds of services.
I guess I will try mailcow first.
You don’t need to know too much about Docker to use Mailcow. It comes with a preconfigured
docker-compose.ymlso you just need to install Docker and follow Mailcow’s installation instructions (which are pretty straightforward)If you have any spare domains that you aren’t using (or domains you’re not currently using email with), you could test it out with that domain before moving any domains you care about :) That’s what I did.
Right on. The first domain I will buy will be a personal fun one, just to experiment and mess around. I don’t quite know what professional name I want for my domain, since I don’t have a brand or anything, and having just my name seems odd.
Not worth the hassle - best compromise is to get your own domain but use a provider like fastmail to host it.
If they turn sour you can move your domain to another mail host.
I think this is the solution I was thinking about in the first place. I was just musing about it being part of a home lab. I have to consider whether this solution is is better than just paying for secure email.
There are advantages to having your own domain - you can use something like vendor8832@yourdomain.com so each site you sign up to gets their own unique “to” address, that way you can easily send their mail to trash when you dont’ need to deal with them anymore, and will also let you know what company had a data breach if that unique email address starts to get spam.
This is what I want! I want that granular control of having an email address compartmentalized for specific kinds of communication. I mean, I know it is something provided by basically all email providers, but I don’t know, for sure there are limitations. A unique address for each website seems like such a smart thing to do, on top of being stingy with giving out my email address.
Protonmail at certain levels gives you simple login with unlimited aliases. Something to look into. I love it and have been with them for years.
Firefox Relay is by far the easiest (and imo best) solution for that
You can try it for free and if you use it enough it only costs $24 a year
Neato. Yeah, just today I spent more than that on a haircut. Will deeply consider it.
Your first 5 email masks are free and if you install the extension a little icon will appear in most email fields. Let’s you create a new mask right there.
If you buy the premium version you can get your own custom subdomain: @XXXX.mozmail.com where you pick XXXX
This way you don’t even need the extension. You can just do something like “Lemmy@XXXX.mozmail.com” and Relay will “create” that email for you. Cannot recommend it enough, especially since it’s free to start
That actually seems really awesome, like it defeats the reason I would ever want to create multiple email accounts, which is to manage different contexts like professional, personal for family and friends, commercial email for online stores, and email lists.
Obligatory PSA: ProtonMail isn’t any more secure than Gmail and is likely a honeypot scheme crafted by government agencies: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/
I know the title of that sounds clickbaity, but they cite their sources. It’s worth the read for those curious about ProtonMail’s history and their CEOs.
Tbh, that document reads like a discovery channel 2am aliens documentary, but it’s not completely without merit.
There are a couple line items about software services they’re using that are shitty that sound pretty legit. The fact that they’re operating in locations where they might have to hand over data sounds pretty legit. Their warrant compliance and logging/handing over a person’s IP address is legit.
The CIA honeypot stuff is all really circumstantial. If the CIA was in as deep as is claimed, a lot of the real evidence people are turning up that they’re not a secure as they could be would be unnecessary.
My best guess is they decided to make an email company based in Switzerland with the schtick that they’re secure (banks amirite?) They’re doing what they can to appear secure without spending too much money. They’re not going to have legal battles to keep your data private, and they are going to comply with agencies request for data. Even if they support end-to-end encryption if they are required by an agency to turn that encryption off for you, they’re going to do it.
They’re probably less likely than Google or Microsoft to sell all of your data to the highest bidder, but realistically there’s no such thing as secure email.
The basic assumption every privacy-concerned person should have about email is that it’s never secure. Unless you use an offline cryptography program to encrypt your email text and then paste it into the email body before you send it, your emails are insecure.
Email was never designed with that in mind. If you want to communicate securely with somebody, use a medium/method that has been designed from the start for that purpose.
I use ProtonMail because it’s not a massive corpo and it’s open source, but I don’t believe that my emails are significantly more secure than on a service like Exchange or Gmail.
This has been my thinking about ProtonMail, even after reading the article on here, and even after reading https://digdeeper.club/articles/email.xhtml (which I have to reread because it keeps getting bigger).
There is no perfect solution, just different levels of trust. That is right, if I want to be “secure” I got to act like a journalist and use a temporary solution or something that has end-to-end encryption.
Besides, email is meant for public communication. No reason to elevate it into some something it will never be.
Yeah. In my experience, you have to be careful in the world of tech privacy/FOSS to not fall off a cliff to the extremes.
You can always find reasons to not trust some piece of tech hardware or software. It’s all too complex and multifaceted to fully vett, and even when you can do that, there isn’t anything that isn’t touched in some way by mega-corps or glowie agencies.
Tor was developed by the US gov, same with the ancestor of the internet. Your network traffic runs on mega-corp wires, through mega-corp servers. Your hardware is developed, built, and distributed by mega-corps, as is most the firmware and microcode in them.
Even Richard Stallman, one of the most hardcore Free Software advocates has concessions he makes for firmware, microcode, and so forth.
The only way to be truly and completely secure tech-wise is to pull a Ted K. And go run into the woods and live in a little cabin, disown any tech built after the turn of the century lol.
It’s “all or something” not, “all or nothing.” Determine your threat model, your ethical bounds, and let those principles guide you. I think fundamentally what all FOSS folks have in common is the idea that the tech you use should serve your needs and desires, not the needs/desires of billion dollar mega-corps farming you as a product.
This is the most sane perspective I have read. For sure it is important to have solid principles and do the right things whenever possible, but no one gets to demand changes for something they never contributed to, especially not those things that took a massive amount of money and human power to build. We are all standing on the soldiers of giants, and it is insane to think we can be Ratatouille, controlling them for out benefit.
The only way to change governments and mega-corps is to make it unprofitable when they do the things we don’t like, or make it so doing the right thing makes them lots of money.
Thanks for this, it is the reality check I need to make good decisions. Even if I do become the Unidumbass, the people I love who would never follow me into that lifestyle.
I actually have a formal methodology for how I engage with software/hardware from a FOSS perspective:
Embrace, Subvert, Accept.
For any task I do currently or want to do, I apply this process:
I first try to find and use any FOSS software/hardware that does that thing well enough to use entirely. (Embrace)
If there isn’t a FOSS solution that exists or does essential things I need, then I use a proprietary technology in a subversive way to do it. So cracked copies, jail broken or otherwise hacked hardware, or using the proprietary service through an unofficial/unapproved 3rd party app. (Subvert)
If I can’t do that either, but the task/need is absolutely critical, only then do I accept using proprietary and unmodified software/hardware. (Accept)
This method has worked pretty great for me. Now about 3 years after starting my FOSS journey, I have almost no software/hardware I use that is in that third category. Basically everything I use is FOSS, hacked, cracked, modded, or runs on platforms that are, and I enjoy tech and computing more than I ever have :)
This is a good method. It is our duty to do everything we can to live by our principles, and be careful about the compromises we make. The more I go deep into FOSS, the more I discover. So much exists, it just takes some work on our part to fit it to our needs. Programming competency does not have to be high, just enough to fix any compile errors.
What’s the saying? If you can’t tell if it’s ignorance or malice, it’s probably the former?
however, with all of these points, even if it is ignorance, the lying about encryption (even though I don’t really use it) is upsetting. That plus the other lies I’ve seen them pull is enough to make me consider switching to something else.
Got any recs? Lol
I used to run my own mail server about 2 years ago but unfortunately the spam got so bad I didn’t have the time to manage all the filters. I moved over to ProtonMail since I can still use my own domain there. So I guess I would say it’s not really worth it also it really sucks if your power is out and not having access to sent your power company a strongly worded email.
E-mail was the first “thing” that got me off of Google (to Proton & then currently Tutanota) but is really the last remaining service I not have self hosted.
I have always read about how difficult and time consuimg it was to run your own mail server, but I felt like I needed to experience it myself. So I purchased another domain and followed the instructions on https://mailinabox.email/.
I am using a small VPS on Hetzner and I have to say the experience has been almost flawless so far. I did need to have my new domain taken off the Domain Block List, but Hetzner gave me a clean IP and defaults to blocking port 25 outbound to prevent spam (simple ticket to open, once account is 30 days old and paid).
I know I’m still early into this journey so far, but it has been really simple and I plan to test this secondary domain for a few months before moving onto it full time.
As an avid self hosted of literally everything else, I can say it has been a lot of fun learning so far!
Hell yes, I love the enthusiasm! I just got a domain, which is giving me 3 months of email, so that is great. I feel like Tutanota is the most honest email service when it comes to advertising privacy, and they do some stuff that Proton definitely does not, like make recovery impossible without a key, and use no other method.
My next step is to get a VPS, and Hetzner is the name I have seen pop up the most. I will use that.
Thank you!
Yes I haven’t had any real issues with Tutanota, but it seems like the common trend is that they, and everyone else, is raising prices for things I dont really need. But at the same time, the things I do need, I.e. accounts with enough storage for my family, will start costing more than the price of renting a VPS alone. So for me, its partially privacy, but also ownership of my data and cost benefit analysis where I am now trying to make CERTAIN that my self hosted email is worth the cost savings.
Also to add on, I didn’t like that tutanota requires their app.
That is the thing, I am willing to pay for email, because then the incentives are real to the provider to follow best practices for privacy and quality of life, but the pricing blows up too quickly due to to features I will never use. I need something more granular.
I am also looking at Disroot and Posteo, which I like because the have hardened ethical principles driving their services, and that is worth supporting.
Also to add on, I didn’t like that tutanota requires their app and that was another reason I wanted to switch. Their app is also really slow for me, where I know I received emails but they take way too long to “load” and “appear” once I open the app.
I host my own mailserver, and to be honest it’s pretty painless. Usually I just let it run without giving it any thought. It’s on rare occasions that I need to put a bit of work into improving the inbound spam scanning.
Selfhosting does need quite some knowledge of the software stack and several additional protocols to set them up correctly to get your outgoing email delivered. Also, like already mentioned in another comment, you absolutely need an IP address from a non-blacklisted subnet (I think most VPS providers will be okay, residential definitely not).
My software stack: Arch Linux (soon NixOS), Postfix, Dovecot, rspamd, opendkim, opendmarc.
Additional techniques configured: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC.
As you can see it’s quite a lot, and I’ve been doing for more than 20 years now, so my opinion can be a bit skewed. I’d say go for it if selfhosting is a hobby.
I have been learning about it, and what really has motivated was seeing my current provider ProtonMail have an anniversary sale, and just having the least affordable pricing just to get a couple features I need. I have never been a fan of cloud storage, I have never needed an online service to handle my calendars or whatever else.
I need to do do this out of principle.
You are right, that is a lot of software in use. However, I have been given a lot of recommendations. I got my own domain name. I am almost ready. I just need to setup a few more things. I am taking a long time to do this, I got distracted with other self-hosted applications, but I do want to try running a mailserver.
