I’m contemplating taking control of my email by moving away from mainstream providers like Gmail or Outlook. What self-hosted email services have you tried, and which ones do you find most reliable and user-friendly? Are there any challenges or advantages you’ve encountered in making the switch?

  • Ok_Construction4430@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    I wouldnt selfhost my e-mail. You will quickly be blacklisted since your server wont have a good reputation and will have issues sending out emails to peers.

    • smileymattj@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Rackspace gets blacklisted exactly twice a year, like clockwork. So how’s it any worse?

    • bermudi86@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I love these pessimistic, ignorant takes because at the end of the day I get more money running (setting and basically forgetting) email servers for paranoid people.

      Send your marketing emails from somewhere else and you’ll never have issues

  • scalyblue@alien.topBEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    Trust me you do not want to point an MX record at your houses IP. It’s a terrible idea, dont do it, I don’t have the energy to qualify that statement but just trust me, don’t.

    • Joyfulsinner@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I’m sorry but a statement like this make me not trust you at all. Take an strangers word for something with no evidence…. This is how a mob of ignorant people do stupid things.

    • solarsparq@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I bought into Fastmail about 10 years ago (for 7 years) & recently moved to Proton about 5 years ago. Both are excellent privacy-first providers. Gmail is my junk e-mail at this point. Good recommendation. Australia-based business. Fastmail & Proton are my votes. I tried self-hosting for a few years & would agree with below – too many issues with blacklists. This is one you should consider paying for.

      • speedcuber111@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’m getting tired of not having IMAP/SMTP access with Protonmail. How would you recommend Fastmail? Anything negative?

  • firebird789@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Mailcow is pretty straightforward to setup and has good documentation. No matter what you choose though be prepared to put a decent amount of work into it. I also recommend using an SMTP relay like SendGrid or Mailgun. That way you don’t have to worry about deliverability as much. If you’re not planning on sending a lot of email (<100 emails a day for SendGrid) you can use their free tiers.

    • Dr_Fu_Man_Chu@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Selfhosting is always best. I just cannot trust remote providers with my mails. Only caviat is you usually need a small server with static IP, most providers block emails delivered from ISPs.

  • EnricoSuavePallazzo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Purelymail.com -- based on a similar thread here 6 months ago. They are very affordable, and I have 5 different domains hosted with them. They only bill based on traffic and storage. I liked being able to have multiple domains without any additional charges.

  • su1ka@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    My setup is: Namesilo for domains, Hetzner VPS with autobackup, Mailcow selfhosted. (Few manual updates with backups per year). Just copy paste steps from Obsidian notes. Cloudflare DNS just in case of ddos etc.

    I have 3 domains with maybe 6 emails and catch em all. I do not send/receive a lot. Maybe 5-10 emails per day. Most of them are notifications from systems.

    All good. I’m happy.