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?
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.
I like what you write, I am going to look deeper into it. It really sucks that the nearly utopian promises of the future and newfound freedoms have been progressively squashed. Every ‘disruption’ that looked like a return to that utopia has ultimately been evil and firmly entrenched in the capitalist mindset.
I am glad it is still possible. I think it would be healthy for me and everyone else to practice digital homesteading, to become self-sufficient while still being able to lean on the greater community of like minded people.
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.
Fascinating read. I have a lot to research. It is not like ProtonMail is the only alternative provider… there are so many, I just like all the extras that they are attaching to it.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I did for a couple years, but moved to mailbox.org a while ago. The effort was much to high to save a few bucks and there is no real upside to it. E-Mail is a troublesome mixture of different protocols from the internet stone age held together by chewing gum (SMTP, POP3, IMAP, DNS, database or file storage, maybe ActiveSync, Web-Mailer, …)
Even when everything is up and running there is always maintenance to keep your SSL certificates up to date, update your incoming spam filter technique, keep other mail providers assured that you are not spamming (DKIM, etc.), keep all the different system services (see above) up to date and interoperable, etc. and every few years when you want to move to a new server, provider or Linux distro you start it all over again.
Damn, it is so bizarre that email of all things would be the least operable by tech savvy individuals. Someone linked an article that explains it, and it truly is depressing. Like, it makes me not want to even have email… which is not really possible if I want to be employed. Eh, it’s not like I DON’T already have free email accounts, I just don’t always like the decision my provider makes.
Well, there are plenty of providers out there there should be one that suits you. Having a domain of your own with DNS access and letting the provider doing the hosting is not (so) hard and gives you the flexibility to switch any time.
That is cool. Everytime I have created a new email account, it has been an island. Never learned to preserve emails… Well, except the one time I use Thunderbird. I should set that up again. Maybe it would solve my issue of multiple accounts??
In any case I like consolidation and I don’t like logging into a website everytime if I can avoid it.
Can’t recommend this enough: https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver
This is has been recommended probably the most. Coming on top as a winner.
I run my own fork where I added MySQL support for aliases. But otherwise it’s great.
Nice! Seems like a cool solution for aliases.
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.
For sure, if I am asking this question, there must already exist a reasonble solution.
I use Cloudflares email routing.
Point my domains name servers to Cloudflares and enable email routing. I can then create any email address in that domain and have it forward to any of my email addresses. Works great when signing up for accounts. The only thing you can’t do is fire off email FROM said email address
Edit: can to can’t
Wow, didn’t know this. I already have my ns pointed to cloudflare, i didn’t get it though - we can only send emails?
It only routes / forwards emails to your inbox from that domain. You can put a catch all rule or direct certain emails to different inboxes. You can’t send emails from the domain in Cloudflare
They might be confused because your original comment said sending emails is the only thing you can do, I’m assuming it’s a typo and you meant it’s the only thing you can’t do
Whoops! Fixed. Thank you!
Cloudflare is another company I only hear complaints about… but everyone uses. Must be solid.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
I used to but all the tweaking with DKIM etc rules took a bit too much of my time. Now I’m using Zoho Mail to host email on my own domain.
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.
I do. Run about a half dozen email servers for various organizations. Been doing it for almost a decade for some. Other than initial setup pain, I’ve had zero problems others describe. I have used (and still run) docker-mailserver, mailcow, mail-in-a-box and mailu. All are lovely in their own way and fit various use cases better than others.
This is so encouraging! For sure it takes a level of technical proficiency and experience, but any technology that has been around for decades has been simplified and automated in one way or another. In retrospect, it is ridiculous to think that all these email providers could exist if they could not overcome the stranglehold of Google and Microsoft, so it must be possible for individuals to do it too,
Your comment is amazing and your experience with that too. Could you explain a little more about what pros and cons of these services? I saw right here the link to IsPGuide - workaround.org where he recommends Debian and metal service. Would you have any opinion on that too?
I’ve thought about rolling my own email service, but I’m hesitant given the risk of it inadvertently nuking the rest of my network. There’s a lot of work needed to keep the thing secure, and even if you do everything right there’s a good chance you get SMTP traffic blocked because other services are worried about unknown accidentally hosting spammer networks.
Plus given my prior track record, there is a $1000% chance I screw up the DNS entries for any mail servers I set up.
A lot of people on here are way more technically minded than I will ever be, so if they are having trouble, I AM IN TROUBLE! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!
I think I will be fine. I am keeping the emails I already set up. If I get fluent and comfortable running my own email server, I may migrate, but I am not shooting myself in the foot anytime soon.
