So, as the topic says, I’m going to set up a self hosted email service for myself, family and friends. I know that this one is a controversial topic around here, but trust me when I say I know what I’m getting into. I’ve had a small hosting business for years and I’ve had my share of issues with microsoft and others, I know how to set things up and keep them running and so on.
However, on the business side we used both commercial solution and a dirt-cheap service with just IMAPS/SMTPS and webmail with roundcube. Commercial one (Kerio Connect, neat piece of software, check it out if you need one) is something I don’t want to pay for anymore (even if their pricing is pretty decent, it’s still money out from my pocket).
I know for sure I can rely to bog-standard postfix+dovecot+spamassassin -combo, and it will work just fine for plain email. However, I’d really like to have calendar and contacts in the mix as well and as I’ve only worked with commercial solution for the last few years I’m not up to speed on what the newest toys can offer.
I’m not that strict on anything, but the thing needs to run on linux and it must have the most basic standards supported, like messages stored on maildir-format (simplifies migration to other platform if things change), support for sieve (or other commonly supported protocol) and contacts/calendar need to work with pretty much anything (android, ios, linux, windows, mac…) without extra software on client end (*DAV excluded, those are fine in my books). And obviously the thing needs to work with imaps, smtps, dkim and other necessities, but that should be implied anyways.
I know that things like zimbra, sogo and iredmail exist, but as mentioned, it’s been a while since I’ve played with things like that, so what are your recommendations for setup like this today?
You may have already read this but I always think back to this blog post about self hosted email:
TLDR;
- Mail is not hard: people keep repeating that because they read it, not because they tried it
- Big Mailer Corps are quite happy with that myth, it keeps their userbase growing
- Big Mailer Corps control a large percentage of the e-mail address space which is good for none of us
- It’s ok that people have their e-mails hosted at Big Mailer Corps as long as there’s enough people outside too
https://poolp.org/posts/2019-08-30/you-should-not-run-your-mail-server-because-mail-is-hard/
For self-hosting, be mindful IP addresses have reputation scores and your IP needs to build them up positively. You need to have reverse DNS set, DKIM, SPF records etc for a more trusted reputation, domain reputation etc to not be flagged and sent to spam folders. I just got the $1/month Proton E-Mail for 10 addresses for 1 custom domain as I didn’t feel like dealing with any of this with self hosting, but props for going the self-hosting route.
ISPs often have SMTP relay servers. If you hook into that, your mail gets instant street cred.
Yes, you’re right. But to be honest, it only took me four weeks of perseverance and a few mails to the administrators of spam lists and I had no more problems with receiving and sending mail.
If you set up your mail server correctly and also enter a postmaster address, you will be informed of any problem, no matter how small, and can address it promptly.
I was surprised at how quickly and, above all, helpfully the staff at the spam list providers respond when you write to them politely and, if necessary, ask for more background information and best practices.
It was definitely worth it for me and I would do the work and build up the knowledge again at any time. As a result, you have maximum freedom in configuration and extensive options for customizing your own workflow in dealing with emails.
My stack is postfix, dovecot, slapd for accounts, SoGO for web mail, calendar and task and contact management. Syncs to my phone via davx and just works out of the box. It’s multi domain and my small company even sells hosted email services.
Rspamd for anti spam and dkim. Use a free email testing service to confirm SPF etc are setup correctly.
Also make sure you have regular backups and up to date lets encrypt certificates.
I’ve been using mailcow for about a year and i am very satisfied, it checks all your boxes and is easy to configure and deploy over docker.
Just beat me to it…
The one thing that they don’t have yet last I updated, though they’ve been working on it for a while, is a prod ready LDAP/SSO connection. I had the dev branch working with Keycloak, but never got plain LDAP to function.
