I recently started looking into hosting my own email, and the suggestions I got were very encouraging, with a lot of easy solutions paired with some unavoidable gotchas.
It is has become apparent that for me to do this right, I need my own domain name, maybe a VPS or host.
I was about to purchase from Infomaniak, which also had an email solution I liked, but one the prices in euro was throwing me off and two it defeats the purpose of controlling and running my own internet services.
So, I will skip the email hosting and give a try at running my own.
Still, is Infomaniak a good buy? I am going crazy thinking up a good name, and settles on the extension me since it will be a personal thing, but not use my real name since I am going to avoid that shit until I really need to.
Any help would be welcome. Thank you.
UPDATE: I bought a domain name off of Porkbun, which was surprisingly pleasant. I am a sucker for cute guided experiences.
May I suggest mailinabox.email for easy email administration. I’ve been using it for a long time and it manages the hard bits :).
Sorry I can’t comment on Infomaniak I’ve never used them.
It has been the top recommended thing, so I will set it up. Hell, I might set them all up just to see what I like.
That’s a great idea, please keep us posted with your adventure.
If I had any sense I would go through the trouble of documenting and BLOGGING what I do.
Except I already said that blogging killed the internet, and nobody needs more poorly written memoirs of their struggles getting something to work.
If I do something interesting or cool, I will let you know!
Please do add a tag to your post as stated on the sublemmy sidebar! Thank you. :)
Thank you for the reminder. I need to be more diligent about following the rules of each instance and reading the sidebar.
I like clouflare for domain hosting. They have a lot of great tools that are included.
Hm, I will check them out then.
(The following is second-hand experience) You should google “DKIM and SPF” before you embark on this journey. The tl;dr of it is that senders of email can (and do) end up blacklisted based on the IP Address of their mail server. If you run your mail server on (say) a.b.c.xx and a known spammer happens to rent a vps from the same provider at a.b.c.yy, you both end up blacklisted. The spammer moves on, whereas your emails fail t make it through other folks’ spam filters, and there won’t be anything you can do about it.
I think those are things that my domain provider basically automates, it is part of the appeal. You are right, I do need to know how that works so that I can actually run an email server effectively and not damage the reputation my IP Address may have.
When I first started with self hosting an easy, and actually free last I looked, way to get email at your own domain was via ZoHo. Fairly simple way to start. True self hosting of email can be a pretty arcane bunch of work, starting with that most home connections are on the Spamhause ZEN list. So far the easiest have been either with Neth Server or using a dockerized mailcow, one is bulky and rather opaque, but easy totie to a domain, the second is a bit more comprehensive but less user friendly sometimes. Plenty of other ways of course all the way to rolling your own from dovecot/postfix on out if inclined.
Thank you, Zoho looks really clean and the pricing is really attractive.
What I am learning is that there is an embarrassment of options. Every hosting provider has email for a reasonable price. It is actually awesome and this thread really expanded the breadth and depth of my understanding of email and all the many ways I can get it.
The main lesson I have learned is that ProtonMail is not even a good option compared to everything I have looked at. It’s marketing about privacy is strong, and they seem to have a good reputation, but their offering does not live up to their marketing, not for the cost.
Practically every recommendation I’ve seen on buying a domain is either:
- PorkBun
- CloudFlare
These two use very straightforward pricing, with no gotchas.
Thank you! I was looking for a solid recommendation. Every thing that provide a domain was trying to bundle it with some extra service.
Kind of late to the party but here’s my 2 cents as someone who worked in system administration and emails for over 10 years.
I highly suggest you do not host your own emails. It is not worth it. Not for just you being on it. Even for most sizeable companies, I do not suggest hosting their own emails.
You will be constantly fighting against problems. And when problems arise, unless you have a dedicated team always on it, it will be frustrating and very slow to react.
Emails are kind of critical in their delivery. You don’t want you emails getting lost and you don’t want other people’s email delivery to you lost either. So, it’s important to keep it at a tip-top shape, but you’ll soon find that the world is very much against you from doing so. Because… spammers.
Some problems here are already mentioned by others. Like if your neighbor gets blacklisted because of spammers, you might get blacklisted with them. Suddenly your emails don’t get delivered, but there’s no notification of any kind that you’ve been blocked. Some services send back notification, but vast majority do not. So you have no idea that you’re even getting blocked. There’s countless blacklist services and there’s also individual blacklists. You have to work with all of them. If you’re even on one of them, you can expect significant majority of your emails to be lost to the void. The larger block you buy, the safer you get. Like if you have a shared IP, you’re guaranteed to be fucked. If you have dedicated IP, it’s better, but if multiple neighbors spam, you’re probably getting blocked too. These kind of problems are often seen with cheaper datacenter/ISPs like hetzner, ovh (sub-brands), etc. You will have zero control over this unless you buy a larger block (datacenter) or get your own ARIN IP assignment (at a point where you are now declared as an ISP).
It’s not just blacklists. Though rarer, some places that tend to be more jumpy work on whitelist… They’re generally not going to add you to their whitelist because you’re a nobody.
Email ports are very frequently target of attacks by hackers. Because spamming is highly valuable. A compromised server’s one of most common usage by the attacker is just spamming. Unless you’re pay attention to the amount of emails going out, or set good thresholds, you won’t notice you’re spamming until someone blocks you and now you gotta talk to dozens of different providers on why it happened and how you fixed it and beg them to restore you. Though with good settings and good upkeep of security practices as well as keeping things reasonably up to date, you shouldn’t get hacked. But it’s work!
Spam also goes both ways. You need to setup a spam filter yourself if you’re looking to host. I could go on and on about this as well, but this post is already getting too long.
You do all this for…? It’s not worth it.
If you want your own domain email, just have a third party hosting. Generally biggest players is the safest choice when you want highest email delivery possible. Like google, msft, aws, etc. Bit pricy for an email which you’re used to getting for free, but it’s generally the route that’s safest. And you’ll have some added value with the suites that you might be using anyway.
Yeah, I got a domain name but I will use it to make a fun website. It comes with email, but I may just use a hosting service. I still want to try it out, but I also don’t want to make it my hobby.
Anyways, paying for email is fine, I pay for so much other crap that is not nearly as important as email.
I did it! I bought my first domain name!!!
Is it wise to share it? I don’t know how to be smart about this yet.
Thx for mentioning infomaniak, I’m looking for alternatives to Mailbox.org as they had to increase their prices. I’ve tried self hosting but somehow it always has been a hassle, might be just me though. Also mailinabox wasn’t around back then. I’ve got my domain at namecheap, they’ve got all the tools and a super cheap whoisguard service. Prices depend on the tld you’re looking for, so you’ll have to look it up.
Hm, I could have looked at namecheap too. I ended up going with Porkbun because of well… it is cute and lovely. Not a great reason to choose a service, but it came highly recommended.
Dang, namecheap also looks rad. Now I don’t even know what to think. I guess I will shop around when it comes to buying my next domain, see what services get included on top of the domain name and if it is something I need.
