I have been running mailinabox with a hetzner server for 2-3 years now.
- Setup was largely painless. Main problem was making sure dns settings at my domain registrar were correct.
- Almost zero problems with mail delivery on the big providers [1]. Last time my email was dropped was by amd.com.
- Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless.
Here is my advice to people who are on the threshold of wanting to host their own email, but are unsure because of mail delivery issues. Well, there are zero problems with incoming mail. So setup mailinabox and use that email to register for websites [2]. Use it for all your mailing lists etc.
Do it for a few years and see how it feels. Occasionally send out email. If enough people do it, then over time it will become easier for more people to host their own email.
[1] I have a theory that I deployed. I asked a whole bunch of people with gmail/hotmail email addresses to send me emails first on my new email. I then replied to them. I think this ensured that from that start I was put on the good lists.
[2] Use websitename@yourdomain.come to register. Easy to block spam this way.
It was flat out impossible for me to get Outlook to accept my mail server. They'd only give me some vague response with no actionable steps to resolve it. I gave up and used a gmail account to route everything outgoing. That way mail still shows up as from:jimm@jimm.horse but rides on Google's reputation. Defeats the purpose a little but there's nothing more I can do (apparently unless I buy my own non residential ISP line, host the server in my house, and build reputatiom forever, but that's an absurd length to have to go through. ideally we'd have antitrust legislation forcing MS et al to be fair towards smaller email and save the open internet overall, but I'm not holding my breath.).
It’s annoying but it’s definitely possible. You have to keep harassing the Microsoft’s support email, eventually someone will deign to read it and whitelist your specific IP address.
It took me a week of back and forth but I was eventually able to get them to allow my IP address in one of OVH’s banned blocks.
They have something weird going on. I had to make an account with them to redeem a game key, and they wouldn't deliver the account verification email to my custom domain hosted by Fastmail. I used a gmail address and the email came instantly. Then out of the blue 24h later the emails to my custom domain were delivered (by which time the verification codes had all expired, of course).
I've done MiaB from 2015-2017, and I've always had deliverability issues from Digital Ocean. Microsoft is particularly nasty, and Gmail kept marking me as spam silently instead of rejecting mail.
I've decided to just move on and pay Fastmail. Email isn't private anyway.
Same, ran very (technically speaking) clean MiAB setup for local business and after 2 years we had to drop it due to delivery issues with MS business accounts. Invoices missed, etc. - a royal pain in the arse. Only a full migration to gmail biz domain fixed things fully. Email. Yikes.
A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server.
For anyone too young to have known, this is how it used to be. Email was desktop (workstation) to desktop. Even when working at large corporations in the 90s, email arrived and was sent to the world directly from my personal workstation.
For anyone worried about deliverability, keep in mind you can outsource the delivery part while still running your own email server for incoming email.
I have experimented with using mailjet as an outgoing relay, for low volumes it was (maybe still?) free. I don't use a relay though, I deliver everything directly. But you don't have to if you worry about delivery.
Why would you do this? For one thing, as parent post says, it gets you used to running the server.
But much more importantly, it gives you complete control of incoming email. Never again is there any chance of google/yahoo/microsoft locking you out of receiving important emails (account resets, bank statements, etc) when you own the receiving server.
Over time you can start relaxing the relaying and deliver directly to most places, only keep the relay to those who give you trouble coughmicrosoftcough.
Or keep the outgoing relay forever if you prefer, but still reap all the benefits of owning the receiving side which is arguably more important.
My experience has been that MAIB version updates are usually very smooth. Regular OS update (apt update/apt install) are smooth. The big problem is that the recommended path is to install on a fresh system when moving between OS versions. In the most recent release that required that, I actually did an in-place upgrade of the OS by running do-release-upgrade twice and leaving the config files as-is. I followed some steps that were posted on the forum. I ran into one or two minor issues but they were the sorts of things I'd expect to see running an "unsupported" upgrade. Other than the OS updates which just take time to download and install, the total work doing it this unofficial way was maybe a couple of hours. That's necessary every 2-3 years, I think?
I do have a few things that I've customized. Updates to MIAB will overwrite them if they're involved in the services it provides. Recently NextCloud updates have been better about removing all of your plugins. The only problem I ever had with it during an update was when the SQLite DB got corrupt. That basically made it so you had to reset NextCloud.
It's not the hours of work that is problematic (though that should go away too). It is the stress of somehow losing my mail. Of course I have backups, but still I would rather not deal with the hassle of recovering from them.
I really wish, we were in a place where such software were designed for NixOS.
> - Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless.
Ran into this too, multiple times. Just not worth it if it breaks the underlying OS.
Your [2] note about using website names in emails is an awesome but underrated benefit. I’ve been doing that with hey.com email at the moment. (Using a custom domain, any address that doesn’t have an inbox goes into the “catch all” box. I can upgrade an address to a real one by setting up a free alias address which is pretty simple in their UI.)
I’ve only caught one sold email being used for spam so far (sketchy wristwatch store that wanted an email to unlock some discount I never used) but really happy I’ll know about the next one.
Used MIAB for years -- one install, about 20 domains, most low volume but 1-2 sending tens of thousands of emails a month. Some notes:
* Every thread that mentions hosting your own email brings out the it's-pointless-do-do-your-own-mail zealots; ignore them. If you're interested in trying it, try it.
* The only deliverability issues I ever had were with ATT networks because they don't use modern TLS; that was fixable. Mail to Google? Goes through, doesn't go into spam. Mail to Microsoft? Ditto. And this is on a Digital Ocean VM, which isn't the most reputable IP pool in the world.
* MIAB will happily be your full-fledged authoritative DNS server. Although I've since migrated to separating DNS from mail hosting, it was very convenient for a long time.
* Setup is dirt simple. And you get MTA-STS as well as DANE/DNSSEC right out of the box.
* The backup function worked without issue the one time I needed it. I'm sufficiently paranoid that I also do regular snapshots of the whole VM.
* There's a fork, Power Mail In A Box, that updates the UI, adds the ability to plug in relayhost settings, and does a few other nice things. It hasn't been updated in about a year, but was similarly solid.
My only quibble with MIAB, and the reason I migrated to Mailcow recently, is that I wanted to easily set up per-domain relay settings from the UI.
I'm on the fence. I wanted to do a super simple app hosting service on the Odroid SBC. I have few services running, but two of them: Authelia and Gitea need smtp for some actually valid reason.
If all I needed was SMTP? I'd likely just use Amazon SES or Mailgun.
I know some folks have concerns with the privacy of that(1), and really want to run their own SMTP. If that's the case, Mail In A Box can do the job, or you can go with a pure SMTP solution like https://github.com/ix-ai/smtp (not endorsing it -- it's just been on my radar) or a roll-your-own Postfix/Exim solution. The latter requires almost zero resources after it's set up; slap it on a $20/year VM and you're done.
1. Chasing privacy with email is a chimera. If you really want private communications, email is not the tool.
This isn't the kind of thing I'd run - I'm still running old school Sendmail, IMAP-UW and Cyrus SASL - but it's good to see resources that make hosting email more accessible to everyone.
There are altogether too many people who think it's their place to tell others they *shouldn't* self host email, and I think that's a horrible take. It's not too different from saying, "I couldn't learn Finnish, so you shouldn't even try".
Actual, technical objections are fine, but most of the time objections brought up by gatekeepery people just show a lack of understanding and experience. For instance, the most common is "you'll never be able to deliver to...", which is ridiculous. Even if you're on a network that has a bad reputation, you can always smarthost through other providers, and you'll still have all the advantages of having logs and your own filters for incoming email, plus the security of possessing your own data.
The Internet is a better place when less centralized, so it's nice to know that we still have people who haven't thrown their hands in the air and given up to Google / Microsoft / Amazon :)
ISPmail/workaround.org is how I got serious with self hosting my emails 10/15? years ago. Really good starting ressource if you want to know how all the internals of a mailserver work
I've been using maddy.email running quietly on my RPi for a couple of years now. I think it's 'simpler' than mail-in-a-box because it implements IMAP, SMTP, all in one server which can be backed by a database, instead of managing installation and updates of many different programs. It also does DKIM automatically and uses ACME/LetsEncrypt to automate certificate management.
It doesn't have as many features as mail-in-a-box though for a example no webmail or Cal/CardDAV, so I have to run those separately. It would be great to extend the project
Another similar project is stalw.art mail server. I haven't used that yet but it looks promising, and it supports JMAP (a possible IMAP successor)
I am also using Maddy so my programs can email me with notifications (I'm not using it to email anyone else) and it has been great.
One thing about Mail-in-a-Box is you have to dedicate your entire machine to being MAIB, whereas Maddy is just a regular program you can run along with everything else.
At this point Stalwart and rspamd two combined will most likely offer a better experience. In terms of supporting modern standards, security and offering enough configurability without requiring arcane knowledge. You can get a good setup with way less effort and fragile components.
The hodgepodge of software used by MIB is just not good any more.
Also Stalwart Mail supports JMAP which is a nice protocol. Not sure how many email clients support it yet though. If I were to host my own mail I'd probably go with Stalwart as it provides a single binary/service for running imap, jmap, smtp, etc. No need to fiddle around with Postfix, Dovecot, etc.
Readit News
- Setup was largely painless. Main problem was making sure dns settings at my domain registrar were correct.
- Almost zero problems with mail delivery on the big providers [1]. Last time my email was dropped was by amd.com.
- Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless.
Here is my advice to people who are on the threshold of wanting to host their own email, but are unsure because of mail delivery issues. Well, there are zero problems with incoming mail. So setup mailinabox and use that email to register for websites [2]. Use it for all your mailing lists etc.
Do it for a few years and see how it feels. Occasionally send out email. If enough people do it, then over time it will become easier for more people to host their own email.
[1] I have a theory that I deployed. I asked a whole bunch of people with gmail/hotmail email addresses to send me emails first on my new email. I then replied to them. I think this ensured that from that start I was put on the good lists.
[2] Use websitename@yourdomain.come to register. Easy to block spam this way.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691618
It took me a week of back and forth but I was eventually able to get them to allow my IP address in one of OVH’s banned blocks.
Or people using outlook would treat your emails as spam?
If it's the former, it's kind of shocking. Dark days...
Had no idea that Bronies were still a thing, or that hardcore about it.
They have something weird going on. I had to make an account with them to redeem a game key, and they wouldn't deliver the account verification email to my custom domain hosted by Fastmail. I used a gmail address and the email came instantly. Then out of the blue 24h later the emails to my custom domain were delivered (by which time the verification codes had all expired, of course).
I saw a bunch of discussion where other people reported the same thing like https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/yr9tqq/amd_rewards... - they got emails instantly when they switched to gmail but other domains didn't work.
I've decided to just move on and pay Fastmail. Email isn't private anyway.
A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server.
For anyone too young to have known, this is how it used to be. Email was desktop (workstation) to desktop. Even when working at large corporations in the 90s, email arrived and was sent to the world directly from my personal workstation.
For anyone worried about deliverability, keep in mind you can outsource the delivery part while still running your own email server for incoming email.
I have experimented with using mailjet as an outgoing relay, for low volumes it was (maybe still?) free. I don't use a relay though, I deliver everything directly. But you don't have to if you worry about delivery.
Why would you do this? For one thing, as parent post says, it gets you used to running the server.
But much more importantly, it gives you complete control of incoming email. Never again is there any chance of google/yahoo/microsoft locking you out of receiving important emails (account resets, bank statements, etc) when you own the receiving server.
Over time you can start relaxing the relaying and deliver directly to most places, only keep the relay to those who give you trouble coughmicrosoftcough.
Or keep the outgoing relay forever if you prefer, but still reap all the benefits of owning the receiving side which is arguably more important.
I do have a few things that I've customized. Updates to MIAB will overwrite them if they're involved in the services it provides. Recently NextCloud updates have been better about removing all of your plugins. The only problem I ever had with it during an update was when the SQLite DB got corrupt. That basically made it so you had to reset NextCloud.
I really wish, we were in a place where such software were designed for NixOS.
Ran into this too, multiple times. Just not worth it if it breaks the underlying OS.
I’ve only caught one sold email being used for spam so far (sketchy wristwatch store that wanted an email to unlock some discount I never used) but really happy I’ll know about the next one.
* Every thread that mentions hosting your own email brings out the it's-pointless-do-do-your-own-mail zealots; ignore them. If you're interested in trying it, try it.
* The only deliverability issues I ever had were with ATT networks because they don't use modern TLS; that was fixable. Mail to Google? Goes through, doesn't go into spam. Mail to Microsoft? Ditto. And this is on a Digital Ocean VM, which isn't the most reputable IP pool in the world.
* MIAB will happily be your full-fledged authoritative DNS server. Although I've since migrated to separating DNS from mail hosting, it was very convenient for a long time.
* Setup is dirt simple. And you get MTA-STS as well as DANE/DNSSEC right out of the box.
* The backup function worked without issue the one time I needed it. I'm sufficiently paranoid that I also do regular snapshots of the whole VM.
* There's a fork, Power Mail In A Box, that updates the UI, adds the ability to plug in relayhost settings, and does a few other nice things. It hasn't been updated in about a year, but was similarly solid.
My only quibble with MIAB, and the reason I migrated to Mailcow recently, is that I wanted to easily set up per-domain relay settings from the UI.
Would you recommend hosting for that use case?
I know some folks have concerns with the privacy of that(1), and really want to run their own SMTP. If that's the case, Mail In A Box can do the job, or you can go with a pure SMTP solution like https://github.com/ix-ai/smtp (not endorsing it -- it's just been on my radar) or a roll-your-own Postfix/Exim solution. The latter requires almost zero resources after it's set up; slap it on a $20/year VM and you're done.
1. Chasing privacy with email is a chimera. If you really want private communications, email is not the tool.
There are altogether too many people who think it's their place to tell others they *shouldn't* self host email, and I think that's a horrible take. It's not too different from saying, "I couldn't learn Finnish, so you shouldn't even try".
Actual, technical objections are fine, but most of the time objections brought up by gatekeepery people just show a lack of understanding and experience. For instance, the most common is "you'll never be able to deliver to...", which is ridiculous. Even if you're on a network that has a bad reputation, you can always smarthost through other providers, and you'll still have all the advantages of having logs and your own filters for incoming email, plus the security of possessing your own data.
The Internet is a better place when less centralized, so it's nice to know that we still have people who haven't thrown their hands in the air and given up to Google / Microsoft / Amazon :)
* https://workaround.org
* https://workaround.org/ispmail-bookworm/
Ansible playbook(s) available:
* https://github.com/Signum/ispmail-bookworm-ansible
It doesn't have as many features as mail-in-a-box though for a example no webmail or Cal/CardDAV, so I have to run those separately. It would be great to extend the project
Another similar project is stalw.art mail server. I haven't used that yet but it looks promising, and it supports JMAP (a possible IMAP successor)
One thing about Mail-in-a-Box is you have to dedicate your entire machine to being MAIB, whereas Maddy is just a regular program you can run along with everything else.
https://poolp.org/posts/2019-08-30/you-should-not-run-your-m...
The hodgepodge of software used by MIB is just not good any more.