I run my own email servers, which I've been doing for more than a quarter of a century, and have only recently (in the last two years) moved from pine to alpine.
People have said they can't picture (pun intended) email without graphics. It's interesting that when I show them, it makes perfect sense, yet they have a hard time imagining it without seeing it.
The more the rest of the world is f*cked up by companies like Google and Microsoft, the happier I am that my email is my own, and the happier I am that I've never stopped self hosting.
I am on a bit of a tear about all the gatekeepers who actively go out of their way to tell everyone else that self-hosting email can't be done, that nobody can do it without tons of problems, and that there are no solutions, so everyone should just give up and choose a megacorporation. It's all bullshit, with tons of options for overcoming deliverability issues (like simply smarthosting through a decent provider) and overcoming limitations of, for instance, running on a residential network.
Do as much as you can without big companies. You'll be better off in the long run for it :)
I also self-host my email. I use Postfix, with a greylist daemon (I wrote) that filters out most of the spam. I do have SPF records, and a reverse name for the IP, and I have had no issues sending email to Gmail. Then again, I've had the same IP address for the past fifteen years or so (helps that I host via a small, local company where I know the owner).
100% percent with you!
Self-hosting emails is nowhere near as hard as you would think.
Receiving them is extremely easy, and for sending, you can always use a SMTP relay.
neomutt with notmuch, afew and offlineimap. afew does the tagging and mail moves and neomutt just browses the indexes. Emails sent with msmtp. I think I've used mutt since 2015, and the notmuch setup since 2019?
For TUI: aerc is a nice email client and you can use mbsync (part of isync) and msmtp to support an offline workflow.
Unfortunately, it’s a pain to setup and probably not worth it when GUI IMAP clients that are easy to setup already exist, even when using old hardware. I’m basically only trying it out for novelty and because I like the terminal.
Self hosting on a Hertzner VPS via nixos-mailserver. To send email, I use a SMTP relay (simpleSMTP) so I don't have to worry about the IP reputation.
I'm thinking about self-hosting a couple domains with an SMTP relay. Do you have a link to simpleSMTP? My search-fu turns up several libraries but no relay service.
I've been paying for Fastmail for years (maybe 8-10 years?) with no regrets at any point ever. I just use the webmail interface on anything computer-like, and iOS's stock mail app on mobile (when on Android, I used FairMail). I don't miss trying to keep mutt and friends happy. CLI mail clients started and stopped with sup for me. Sure, notmuch (a clever retort to sup, for those unfamiliar with the lineage) tried to be a more general solution, but it lost the ease of use and "just works defaults" that made sup magical. I tried for years to like my mutt+mbsync setups before finally just giving up.
I self-host postfix+dovecot+rspamd on a tiny Digitial Ocean machine.
Like many of you are commenting, receiving email is trivial. Mail is delivered into a local maildir, and I either use mutt of thunderbird to read. dovecot is only available over a wireguard VPN.
A few complaints about my setup:
I have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all set-up, but mail delivery is not quite as reliably as I'd like. About once a year I end up on a policy block list (which is to be expected, since I'm on DO). If anyone has a recommendation for a decent outgoing relay, let me know
rspamd is pretty good, but not great. An annoying amount of spam gets through.
I'm somewhat terrified of a deadlock whereby I can't access my mail server to read mail, but to reboot it via Digital Ocean's web console, they have to first send me a verification email (which I won't be able to receive).
i just use thunderbird (with migadu hosting my email). done so for as long as i can remember. my free time is stretched thin enough, and email is critical enough, that i'd rather have people whose entire job is maintaining an email stack do so for me.
primary system is fastmail + webui
secondary is mbsync + notmuch from fastmail
for fun i wrote some scripts that generate notmuch tags from my fastmail rules json file. It's been pretty interesting and useful to have a second view into e-mail.
Also other things are trivial like generating stats or bulk deletion from bash scripts
Every two weeks or so, when some website forces me to use email for login, I open gmail.com and then I see that I often have gotten some other messages there, luckily nothing urgent or personal. Then I proceed to try to forget that email exists.
johnklos | 6 hours ago
I run my own email servers, which I've been doing for more than a quarter of a century, and have only recently (in the last two years) moved from
pinetoalpine.People have said they can't picture (pun intended) email without graphics. It's interesting that when I show them, it makes perfect sense, yet they have a hard time imagining it without seeing it.
The more the rest of the world is f*cked up by companies like Google and Microsoft, the happier I am that my email is my own, and the happier I am that I've never stopped self hosting.
I am on a bit of a tear about all the gatekeepers who actively go out of their way to tell everyone else that self-hosting email can't be done, that nobody can do it without tons of problems, and that there are no solutions, so everyone should just give up and choose a megacorporation. It's all bullshit, with tons of options for overcoming deliverability issues (like simply smarthosting through a decent provider) and overcoming limitations of, for instance, running on a residential network.
Do as much as you can without big companies. You'll be better off in the long run for it :)
spc476 | 6 hours ago
I also self-host my email. I use Postfix, with a greylist daemon (I wrote) that filters out most of the spam. I do have SPF records, and a reverse name for the IP, and I have had no issues sending email to Gmail. Then again, I've had the same IP address for the past fifteen years or so (helps that I host via a small, local company where I know the owner).
aloys | 4 hours ago
100% percent with you! Self-hosting emails is nowhere near as hard as you would think. Receiving them is extremely easy, and for sending, you can always use a SMTP relay.
Foxboron | 7 hours ago
neomuttwithnotmuch,afewandofflineimap.afewdoes the tagging and mail moves and neomutt just browses the indexes. Emails sent withmsmtp. I think I've used mutt since 2015, and the notmuch setup since 2019?SMTP is all self-hosted as well. Yes, I do regret this.
deevus | an hour ago
I think the regret associated with self-hosting SMTP is baked into its design.
nextos | 2 hours ago
Why offlineimap and not mbsync? I found the later much more efficient.
Aks | 8 hours ago
I use Startmail as a provider, my own domain so I can hop between providers easily, and KMail as my client. Has been working fine for me for years.
On my remarkable tablet since i have gotten a terminal on it, i use mutt with it sometimes. Its pretty nice for catching up on things.
jaredkrinke | 6 hours ago
For TUI: aerc is a nice email client and you can use mbsync (part of isync) and msmtp to support an offline workflow.
Unfortunately, it’s a pain to setup and probably not worth it when GUI IMAP clients that are easy to setup already exist, even when using old hardware. I’m basically only trying it out for novelty and because I like the terminal.
Oh, and there’s also emacs.
toastal | 26 minutes ago
Same here… also just using the online support of aerc
samuelhautamaki | 8 hours ago
I currently have a very simple postfix and dovecot setup with my own domain. I honestly just use either Thunderbird or I ssh in and use mutt.
ecksdee | 7 hours ago
I use https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver and do regex based aliases
jfb | 5 hours ago
My domains are hosted on Fastmail; mbsync to pull it locally; mu (and mu4e) as my agent, and msmtp to send.
aloys | 4 hours ago
Self hosting on a Hertzner VPS via nixos-mailserver. To send email, I use a SMTP relay (simpleSMTP) so I don't have to worry about the IP reputation.
On the client side, I use mu4e in emacs.
My mails are synced via mbsync and backed up across my machines + a cloud backup.
It was surprisingly mostly painless and worked straight away (you hear so many horror stories online).
I even get emails out of Gmail with this setup.
Cost is about $5 a month, but I also use that VPS for other things (Pangolin controle plane, etc).
hoistbypetard | 4 hours ago
I'm thinking about self-hosting a couple domains with an SMTP relay. Do you have a link to simpleSMTP? My search-fu turns up several libraries but no relay service.
aloys | 2 hours ago
Oh duh! It's SMTP2go, not simple smtp: https://www.smtp2go.com/
Funnily, this lapsus shows how often I deal with it (never) and what I think of it (simple).
klardotsh | an hour ago
I've been paying for Fastmail for years (maybe 8-10 years?) with no regrets at any point ever. I just use the webmail interface on anything computer-like, and iOS's stock mail app on mobile (when on Android, I used FairMail). I don't miss trying to keep mutt and friends happy. CLI mail clients started and stopped with
supfor me. Sure,notmuch(a clever retort tosup, for those unfamiliar with the lineage) tried to be a more general solution, but it lost the ease of use and "just works defaults" that madesupmagical. I tried for years to like my mutt+mbsync setups before finally just giving up.eminence32 | 22 minutes ago
I self-host postfix+dovecot+rspamd on a tiny Digitial Ocean machine.
Like many of you are commenting, receiving email is trivial. Mail is delivered into a local maildir, and I either use mutt of thunderbird to read. dovecot is only available over a wireguard VPN.
A few complaints about my setup:
arcayr | 5 hours ago
i just use thunderbird (with migadu hosting my email). done so for as long as i can remember. my free time is stretched thin enough, and email is critical enough, that i'd rather have people whose entire job is maintaining an email stack do so for me.
sigmonsez | 56 minutes ago
primary system is fastmail + webui secondary is mbsync + notmuch from fastmail
for fun i wrote some scripts that generate notmuch tags from my fastmail rules json file. It's been pretty interesting and useful to have a second view into e-mail.
Also other things are trivial like generating stats or bulk deletion from bash scripts
fiatjaf | 5 hours ago
Every two weeks or so, when some website forces me to use email for login, I open gmail.com and then I see that I often have gotten some other messages there, luckily nothing urgent or personal. Then I proceed to try to forget that email exists.
sugaryboa | 3 hours ago
Postfix+cyrus+mbsynx+mu4e+k9mail
I've written my own IMAP NOTIFY watcher https://gitlab.com/Lockywolf/imap-idle-mail-checker
It also watches for gmail labels using Gmail-specific mechanism.
But overall it's horrible and inconvenient. A pale shadow of Telegram/Discord/Gmail.
fourfourthree | 2 hours ago
I use a self-hosted email setup - postfix + dovecot + rspamd on a colocated server. have been doing this for nearly 20 years now.
for client, I use a mix of alpine and mac mail. I have never liked email web UIs - I'm forced to use gmail at work and I hate it a lot!