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Do any of you still self-host email? I am losing my mind

General Discussion by mediaaustin 30 replies 1.8K views
harbourops

Member

4 #21
FlowSana said:
Dedicated mail subnets with no other services

This is how I run client mail too. Postfix and Dovecot on Alpine, nothing else, automatic updates through a custom ansible role. Thirty sites and I sleep fine.

The clients who insist on self-hosted despite my advice get the same setup. I charge extra for the monitoring. The ones who moved to Fastmail or Proton never looked back, except one lawyer who needed German data residency.

The middle ground people miss: managed is not Gmail. Fastmail runs on your domain. Proton if you need the encryption marketing. The privacy argument against these is weaker than the self-host crowd admits.

dancore

Member

4 #22
MARIA3 said:
Now I pay 3 dollar to GreenCloudVPS for email

Wait they do email hosting? I thought they were just VPS. Do they run mailcow for you or is it shared cpanel-style?

I found a Dell R620 in a dumpster behind an office park, 128GB RAM, dual E5-2680v2. Runs my whole life now. Mail is the hardest part by miles. The hardware was free and I still wonder if I should have just paid Fastmail.

MARIA3

Member

7 #23
dancore said:
Wait they do email hosting?

Is shared, not VPS. I give them my domain, they make the DNS. I have cpanel for make forwarders. Is not perfect but I do not need perfect, I need work.

Before I try self-host and is too much. Now I have time for make a Minecraft server for my nephew. This is better for me.

siesta first, deploy later
nate_pad

Member

7 #24

This thread is making my head spin. I just want to set up email for a domain I bought. Should I even try self-hosting or just go with one of the managed ones?

I am on a £5/month VPS from Krystal already for a website. The domain is new, no reputation anywhere. Reading this it sounds like I would be fighting uphill from day one.

haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#25
nate_pad said:
Should I even try self-hosting

No.

Not yet. Run your website. Learn Linux. Come back to mail in two years when you understand why everyone in this thread sounds tired.

If you need mail on that domain now, Forward Email does free forwarding to your existing Gmail or whatever. Or pay Migadu, they are small and honest about their limits. Do not put a new IP in the wild and expect it to deliver.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
quinnbizz

Member

#26

Migadu is good people. Based in Switzerland, pricing is honest, they do not pretend to be unlimited. I have used them for a club domain since 2022. Maybe three deliverability issues total, all resolved same day by actual humans who answered my email.

The limit is 200 outgoing per day on the cheap plan. Fine for personal use, not for a business.

New Zealand perspective: our timezone means support from US or EU providers is always delayed. Migadu answers at 2am their time sometimes. That is rare.

...
mediaaustin

Member OP

Deliverability Nerd

#27
nate_pad said:
I am on a £5/month VPS from Krystal

Krystal is solid for web, I have heard good things about their support. But their IP ranges are heavily used for hosting, which means some mail providers treat the whole ASN as "mixed reputation." Not Krystal's fault, just the reality of shared hosting.

If you absolutely must self-host later, budget for a dedicated IP from a provider with clean ranges. OVH, Hetzner, Vultr all have this option. It is not the IP cost that hurts, it is the months of warming.

For now, seconding Migadu or Forward Email. Get your domain working without the pain.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
EL

Member

#28
olespete said:
V2. E5-2670

V2 is sandy bridge-ep, avx but not avx2. For mail it does not matter but if you run any crypto later the v3 has better instructions per clock.

I have a v3 2678 in my basement, 48GB, draws 180W idle. The power bill is why I moved mail to a VPS.

olespete

Member

Trust No One

1 #29
elderpaul said:
Draws 180W idle

Mine is at OVH so their power bill, not mine. The 2GB KVM is enough, I do not run crypto. The v2 was what they had in stock when I ordered in 2021.

I should probably upgrade to something newer but migration is annoying and it works.

airgapped, encrypted, faraday'd, still worried
HA

Member

#30

Has anyone tried Stalwart vs Mailcow recently? I moved from Mailcow to Stalwart in January because Rust memory safety and all that. The config is more explicit, less magic, which I like. But the community is smaller and some things like SOGo replacement are still rough.

Deliverability is identical as far as I can tell. Same IP, same domain, just swapped the MTA. If anything Stalwart is stricter about TLS which caused one issue with an old client server that only did TLS 1.0 — https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

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