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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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[Question] Does anyone run their own email server? (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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All this new excitement with Lemmy and federation has got me thinking that maybe I should learn to run my own instance. What always comes up though is how email is the orginal federated technology.

I am looking at proxmox and see that is has a built in email server, so now I am wondering if it is time to role my own.

I stopped using gmail a long time ago, and right now I use ProtonMail, but I am super frustrated with the dumb limitation of only having a single account for the app. I get why they do it, and I am willing to pay, but it is pricey and I don't know if that is my best option. I guess it is worth it since ProtonVPN is included. It looks like they are expanding their suite.

Is it worth it? Can I make it secure? Is it stupid to run it off a local computer on my home network?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotta say, I’m really happy to see so many people here actually talking about doing it! Usually I see a lot of fear-mongering about self hosting email. You can do it, though, and I think we should encourage more people to do so! It can be a little tricky to set up at first because there’s a lot of different things you need to configure and make talk to each other — I haven’t used them but there’s things like mail-in-a-box that are supposed to make this easier. But the most important thing is to make sure you set up SPF, DMARC, and DKIM DNS records (and set up DKIM signing for your outgoing messages). I’d recommend setting the ruf and rua tags in the DMARC record so you get mailed reports from other mail servers (can help you debug if your mail is getting rejected). I’d also use these tools:

https://www.mail-tester.com/ https://www.learndmarc.com/

Happy mailing :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the encouragement! I am inching my way towards building a server, and I am thankful for all the tips and suggestions I got.

I am starting to think that if email is the hardest to self-host, then perhaps more people should try it. It is worthy to take regain indepedence and autonomy of technology, even if it seen as a lost cause.

Yeah, I hope to get something running soon, just so I can say I did it.