Like the title says, I’m new to self hosting world. 😀 while I was researching, I found out that many people dissuaded me to self host email server. Just too complicated and hard to manage. What other services that you think we should just go use the currently available providers in the market and why? 🙂thank you
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E-mail
In my opinion, cloud storage for (zero knowledge) backup. Your backup strategy should include a diversity of physical locations. I had a house fire a few years ago. Luckily, my data drives survived, but if they hadn’t, my cloud backup would’ve been invaluable.
Don’t host your own email server.
Just trust me.
Meh, been doing it for 5 years now with minimal issues. Had one issue come up where my domain was flagged as malicious, but was solved in a few days and some emails to security vendors.
I think it’s important that those who can, and are educated enough to keep it running properly do host their own. Hosting your own email should be encouraged if capable because it helps reduce the monopoly, and keep a little bit of power for those who want to retain email privacy.
I agree with KN4MKB. I’ve been hosting my own mail server for decades. Not one issue. I use that in lieu of a mail service provider (Google immediately comes to mind), as their EULA service agreement will tell you that - since you’re using their service, on their servers - anything goes. Read the fine print on Gmail, and you’ll see. 😉
I did for years quite successfully. Ultimately blocklists did me in however - I don’t have the knowledge to resolve those timely and it became a headache I couldn’t tolerate at that time.
Why?
I did it anyway some time ago and I’m really happy with it. I’m using my own email addresses for absolutely anything by now.
They are not hard to setup, easy to keep running (once going they pretty much just work). If you follow the right steps you can avoid being undeliverable and keep people from abusing your sending server (as a relay).
Okay I understand that email hosting is bad for SENDING email , but what about only RECEIVING email , isn’t it a good idea to keep my stuff private ? I rarely send personal emails, and like to avoid my data being used for marketing purposes Is that bad to have smtp imap open on dynamic ip address ? Just asking your opinion
I’m doing exactly that, and it works like a charm. Get a DynDNS, backup mx and SMTP relay and you’re good, or get a domain provider like strato.de that already includes all three with the domain.
Spam is also manageable. I get maybe 1-2 per day that make it past the filter, and I do have to add some custom keyword filters from time to time, but that’s about it. Fetching updated filter lists and self-learning from past errors keeps the filter up to date and is completely automated.
Self hosted doesn’t mean hosted on your home connection. Even with a static IP I would recommend against hosting your mail server at home because any outage means no mail (been there, done that). I have hosted my own imap/smtp server for decades and couldn’t be happier with it, but yes, the smtp part is tricky to evade blocks, especially from MSFT who would just block entire networks without a real reason (Linode for example)
Antispam is hell, just saying
Antispam is easy with a mix of greylisting and spamassassin
A password manager because if anything goes wrong, you’ll be completely screwed.
What you SHOULD absolutely self host though is a password manager, so you can be in control of your most sensitive data.
Regarding email, I think everyone should absolutely self host it, but it’s less and less viable in this google/Microsoft duopoly world. But ideally everyone would self host it. The reason why people advise against it really comes down to lack of real competition, and the two tech giants dictating how we violate every RFC possible.
A password manager because if anything goes wrong, you’ll be completely screwed.
What you SHOULD absolutely self host though is a password manager, so you can be in control of your most sensitive data.
Wot?
Passwords:
-> You want to have immediat access to them, even if your house burns downNotes:
-> You want to be able to read the documentation how to fix your selfhosted service, even when your selfhosted services are downPublic Reverse proxy:
-> A reverse proxy is only as safe as the applications behind. And NO, most selfhosted-applications are not hardened or had security audits
(reverse proxy with a forward authentication proxy is something different)Primary backups
I’d say backups. At least it shouldn’t be only local. I follow the rule of threes: two local copies and one off site with backblaze. Yeah, it ties up a not insignificant amount of disk space I could use for other things, but dammit, I’m not loosing my wedding photos, important system configurations, etc.
People saying email, look into using external SMTP servers as relays. Your domain most likely comes with at least one email account with SMTP access. You can use that as a relay to send personal/business emails from your server using the provider’s reputable IP addresses.
Don’t self-host email SMTP or public DNS. They’re hard to set up properly, hard to maintain, easy to compromise and end up used in internet attacks.
Don’t expose anything directly to the internet if you’re not willing to constantly monitor the vulnerability announcements, update to new releases as soon as they come out, monitor the container for intrusions and shenanigans, take the risk that the constant updates will break something etc. If you must expose a service use a VPN (Tailscale is very easy to set up and use.)
Don’t self-host anything with important data that takes uber-geek skills to maintain and access. Ask yourself, if you were to die suddenly, how screwed would your non-tech-savvy family be, who can’t tell a Linux server from a hot plate? Would they be able to keep functioning (calendar, photos, documents etc.) without constant maintenance? Can they still retrieve their files (docs, pics) with only basic computing skills? Can they migrate somewhere else when the server runs down?
Also, check out “ciphermail”. It’s end-to-end encryption mail server.
lol
Mail server or anything using RDP.
Email
I don’t self host anything where it would impact me unduly if it went down while I was on holiday to the point where I’d have to break state and go fix stuff.
I don’t want to have to leave my beer or beach and head off to fix things like an email server, restore a password manager db etc. so anything like that which is critical to the point where an outage would prob have me do so means I pay someone else.
That’s an underrated razor. Not the whole decision tree for me, but a huge part of it.
I think there’s a hangup on the term “self-host” where some people are assuming it’s going to be exposed to the Internet.
I self-host a ton of stuff that is only available inside my home network or through my VPN, which is not publicly discoverable. I would never open a TCP port to the world from my home network. That’s how you end up on shodan.
So yeah, if it has to accept inbound connections from arbitrary other systems on the dirty internet (email, mastodon, etc), it’s not happening on my network, and probably not at all because it’s a pain in the ass to stay patched.
Email
