There's also an ansible playbook by the author to automate all of that for you.
Other solid solutions include Mail-in-a-box and Mailcow. DuckDuckGo them to learn more.
A lot of people say that you shouldn't waste your precious time hosting email. Then, these same people won't hesitate to spend countless hours browsing Pornhub or Netflix and playing video games.
Forget about these losers and roll your own email for fun. The last thing you want is to be on your deathbed regretting not having had your own personal mail server.
Running an email server has been a pain forEVER. Running one's own personal mail server is a terrible idea unless you are a professional sysadmin with time to kill.
> But what's the joy or reward of running your own mail server?
Not having to deal with rate limits or weirdness in regards to delivering mail from software in an automated manner, which would be there with any of the other "big" hosts.
For example, currently i have the following hooked up to a self-hosted e-mail server:
Or any number of other pieces of software that could send lots of other e-mails.
If i use my own self-hosted mail server, then there are no odd spam filters or whatever to deal with (unless i introduce my own) - i send as many messages as i need and i receive all of them as well, plus all of the data stays wherever i want it to. This is also relevant for older software that might have problems with the more secure methods of delivering mails.
Oh and there's not a lot to think about, pricing wise, either.
Lastly, running a basic mail server is exceedingly simple with https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver No need to manually configure mail delivery agents or whatever. In my eyes, a mail server with everything it needs should be a single executable/container, with toggleable bits of functionality, rather than some overcomplicated amalgamation of mixed and matched pieces that would need lots of your time to maintain.
You're correct, I shot myself in the foot there. But can we agree that some people manage to successfully run their own email servers and some people don't?
I've hosted my own mail server for a while. I've gone the Postfix/Dovecot route, I've used qmail, etc. My current setup is WebMin/VirtualMin. It works really well, and will run on the cheapest DO droplet.
There are definitely reasons to run your own mail server. However, I've found (in my 7 years as a linux sysadmin/dev) that email is one of the harder services to setup, compared to http, database, etc.
It's the only service I use a GUI for to administer. Something about having to compile the aliases, and I get confused with the spamassasin settings.
The article presents a fair argument, but the title is obviously flame bait.
Granted, I myself thought of setting up my own mail server, but the disadvantages quickly outweighed the benefits. If your argument is sheer privacy, unless you are hosting your mail on a physical machine at your house connected to your home ISP (which is pretty dumb if you want ~100% uptime), you will most likely either use a VPS or managed system under the control of yet another company, which privacy-wise is the equivalent of using Gmail anyway.
I'm sure setting up your own hobby mail server would be pretty fun and provide great deals of experience, but if you are doing so simply for data privacy or better up time, your point is moot, and you will probably be better off just using a provider like Google.
> I used to want to self-host it but (IMO) running a secure, reliable email server is just too difficult these days.
I disagree. I am running my own small email server for years on Debian stable without any issues except the initial configuration. Freedombox has a mail server on their roadmap. It automates the configuration. You can even buy a small appliance (Olimex A20) ready to go.
> It's so easy to configure and run your own mail server
Is it? Is dealing with IP reputation, getting your emails accepted by major providers, and being on the hook for fixing everything yourself very easy? I haven't tried, so I don't have personal experience, but I've heard enough horror stories to think that it's not a good use of my time.
Do you run your own mail server? I'm not opposed to the idea of trying it, but it seems like it would require a lot of work, and the potential for losing critical emails would be higher. It definitely sounds fun though.
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