My apologies if this post is too offtopic - please let me know and I will delete it!
I have gotten a notification from my web hosting provider with yet another price increase. So I figure it is time to start looking for another solution. For my websites I will be looking into hosting them on a VPS - I have a Nanode (1 CPU/1 GB RAM/25 GB Storage) that is not being used and I can beef that up.
But what about mail? Running a mailserver is not trivial, and then there is the issue about outgoing mail being flagged as spam - has that been solved with SPF, DKIM and DMARC or does one still need a front?
And what wold be a good backend? While I am not a fan of Windows as a server OS, Exchange is a strong product especially the integrated mail + calendar + address book in the āpackageā. I can get a Windows Server 2022 license either Standard or Datacenter for under USD 50 and a 2022 RDS CAL license for around USD 35 but I am not sure this is enough? I would run this as a VM in Proxmox
There is a lot to this. Itās not too hard to set up a mail server, but deliverability can be a real struggle.
If the topic is of interest, Michael Lucas just released a new book called Run Your Own Mail Server, which (like all his books) is a great read and pretty in-depth.
Iāve been hosting my mail server for years using the mailcow docker project, having migrated to that from a more manual set up.
Not getting mistaken for spam is the real issue. At a minimum youāll need an IP address with a clean reputation, but the big email players (Google, Microsoft, Apple) may decide to arbitrarily not deliver your mail and thereās little to be done. When I was first getting set up, I consulted mxtoolbox.com often to make sure I wasnāt missing anything that might land me on a blocklist.
On the platform side, in my case I have mailcow running inside a Proxmox LXC on a VPS.
Now, having said all that, if youāre tired of your providerās prices, there are other fish in the see that may be worth checking out. At my business I use Zoho, which has been pretty solid and Iāve heard decent things about fastmail, too.
I think consensus on the topic is that while it can be done and if you follow all the best practices you will very likely have a functional setup, you can also end up being put in peopleās spam folder due to no fault of your own. You are in many ways at the mercy of a few big tech companies and the smaller you are the less of chance you have to get through to them.
Personally I recently moved to Migadu after some years with Proton mail. I like Protons mission, but I wanted something closer to running my own (no restrictions on amount of domains, mailboxes etc) setup. Super happy with them and theyāll be the ones that have to tell Google or Microsoft to f themselves if they decide to block their IP-block.
If anyone is curious I wrote some more detailed thoughts on why I moved from Proton to Migadu.
It is certainly possible to host your own mail if youāre a thoroughly technical person. You just need to be aware that youāre walking into a war zone when you do. Itās not something you set up and then youāre done with, itās at best a simmering dumpster fire, and youād better be keeping an eye on it.
As others have mentioned, running a real mail server is a full time job.
I can recommend mxroute for email - I just renewed for another 3 years & have been with them for 5.
Migrating mail to their servers can be done with imapsync - I would pick up one of their 3 year Black Friday deals which are usually very good - there is also a lifetime deal if your mail volume is low (under 300 messages an hour).
A good backend for a 1gb RAM VPS would be Alpine Linux - years ago I happily ran a mail / web / database server all on 1 core / 256mb RAM. Nowadays I run MicroOS from opensuse on all my servers (replacing Debian / Ubuntu which I ran for about 5 years) - the RAM usage is about the same & I never have to reinstall (MicroOS is a ārolling releaseā) - in almost a year I have had zero issues. The hosts all reboot in about 5 seconds every 1-2 days to apply security updates (see rebootmgr && transactional-update). The ability to create custom iso images for MicroOS is great - you boot from the iso & MicroOS installs itself.
On my servers I configure Postfix as a Smart Relay => mxroute. Iāve also done it previously with Exim. Nowadays I run my relays ārootlessā (unprivileged) under podman in 2 locations & configure MX records (in an internal domain) for High Availability. I also run netbird to connect everything together over wireguard so I donāt expose my infrastructure to the internet. Running your own authoritative DNS server (for your custom MX records) - is also quite easy with Knot DNS (which I also run under podman) - it has a shell for adding DNS entries which is nice. For high availability I keep the primary DNS on my workstation which updates 3 x remote secondaries configured to write zone files - again running securely over netbird.
As you use Proxmox - you may find distrobuilder-menu useful for building custom LXC images.
Do not try to run a mailserver on a residential IP.
Most ISPs block port 25 outbound nowadays anyway and unless youāre in an extremely rare minority you donāt have IPv6 for the last mile ISP, which is required for email these days.
Iāve been running my own mailserver on a Nanode for the past year and itās been mostly fine. Youāll have to request their support unblock the mail ports if you go with Linode.
I will warn you, you will have some headaches. Microsoft blocked all of Linode from emailing their free tier accounts for months on end. And just this morning I noticed that the Linode ipv6 block got listed on Spamhaus, which resulted in a bounce from a mailing list.
Is this for personal e-mail? Mailing list? A business?
I agree with the others that running your own mail host is a real drag. Being sysadmin over the host itself is the easy part; the brain damage lies within keeping the mail flowing and deliverability high ā both inbound and out.
Among other things I have an MS background. As much as Iād love to run my own Exchange server (either on-prem or on a VPS) I opted for a $5/mo Office 365 plan some 11-12 years ago and never left. I might spend 30-60 minutes per year wearing my Exchange Admin hat for whatever reason. It just runs itself and if an expected e-mail never arrives (very rare) I have layers of tracing, delivery reports, and anti-spam/anti-phishing knobs I can twist.
This is the one really big negative I see to both Google and Microsoft hosted mailāyou have āmultiple layersā, but that doesnāt mean those layers go all the way to the bottom. Iāve observed both providers just stonewalling certain emails without anything every showing up in any log I have access to.
Iāve also seen both providers take minutes at a time to receive email to a degree where itās visible to me, which is frustrating not only when Iām trying to do email-based validation (yuck), but even more so when Iām troubleshooting deliverability problems and need to know whether something got stonewalled, or simply hasnāt been sent.
At this point I think the number one reason Iām still running my own dedicated mailserver is because any time a client is having discoverability issues, I can have them send me an email and I will know FOR AN ABSOLUTE FACT everything that happened. If their mailserver contacted mine in ANY way at all, I WILL know about it, and there will be no lag in figuring it out, either.
I see the potential in M365, but even USD 5/month is USD 60 per user per year - I could setup some of the email addresses as shared mailboxes, but I would still need 5-7 users, so that would bring the expense to USD 350+ - a lot more than my price increase, so I think that for now I will stick it out and do more research, look further into Migadu as other offers might be hosting their data outside the EU - as that would be a requirement to host within the EU.
I am using Fastmail. Been great. You can through your domain name into this, but only on the āstandardā and up plans. Custom domains can be added to both personal and business.
Itās 4.50 GBP per user/month on the business side. Family plan (up to 6 users) is 9.90 GBP per month.
Thank You for all your suggestions! I will think about how to proceed - at the moment I will probably bite the bullet and accept the price increase as I have a shorter decision period than I thought, but then think a bit more about the future until next time ā¦