So, as the topic says, I’m going to set up a self hosted email service for myself, family and friends. I know that this one is a controversial topic around here, but trust me when I say I know what I’m getting into. I’ve had a small hosting business for years and I’ve had my share of issues with microsoft and others, I know how to set things up and keep them running and so on.
However, on the business side we used both commercial solution and a dirt-cheap service with just IMAPS/SMTPS and webmail with roundcube. Commercial one (Kerio Connect, neat piece of software, check it out if you need one) is something I don’t want to pay for anymore (even if their pricing is pretty decent, it’s still money out from my pocket).
I know for sure I can rely to bog-standard postfix+dovecot+spamassassin -combo, and it will work just fine for plain email. However, I’d really like to have calendar and contacts in the mix as well and as I’ve only worked with commercial solution for the last few years I’m not up to speed on what the newest toys can offer.
I’m not that strict on anything, but the thing needs to run on linux and it must have the most basic standards supported, like messages stored on maildir-format (simplifies migration to other platform if things change), support for sieve (or other commonly supported protocol) and contacts/calendar need to work with pretty much anything (android, ios, linux, windows, mac…) without extra software on client end (*DAV excluded, those are fine in my books). And obviously the thing needs to work with imaps, smtps, dkim and other necessities, but that should be implied anyways.
I know that things like zimbra, sogo and iredmail exist, but as mentioned, it’s been a while since I’ve played with things like that, so what are your recommendations for setup like this today?
For self-hosting, be mindful IP addresses have reputation scores and your IP needs to build them up positively. You need to have reverse DNS set, DKIM, SPF records etc for a more trusted reputation, domain reputation etc to not be flagged and sent to spam folders. I just got the $1/month Proton E-Mail for 10 addresses for 1 custom domain as I didn’t feel like dealing with any of this with self hosting, but props for going the self-hosting route.
ISPs often have SMTP relay servers. If you hook into that, your mail gets instant street cred.
I’ve been playing with Stalwart-Email as a combined SMTP/IMAP server. Its open source and written in rust, still pretty early in development and I haven’t played with it enough to give any real opinion on the pluses or minuses compared to other software, but its worth taking a look at.
Stalwart is 95% awesome. What holds me back is, that Mails are stored in a Database and not Maildir. Maildir is insanely trivial to backup incrementally and to restore individual mails if necessary. That currently holds me on dovecot.
Currently using Stalwart after about a decade of using iRedMail. Stalwart’s setup was such a breeze; I let out an audible laugh/noise when the install completed in the blink of an eye and had all the DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc. settings available for config.
Making some nice improvements with each release too, proper user management, etc. Definitely a fan. Looking forward to when they support CalDAV and CardDAV.
Check out Mail-in-a-Box
It doesn’t answer your questions about calendar and contacts, but you might still find it interesting to take a look at this project:
I’ve been using Maddy for about a year. It’s easy to set up and has been trouble free.
I have been using modoboa, my installation is fine as far as it goes, but coming up a little short technologically these days, and the upgrade path is total replace. If you have or install Docker on your server, there are poste.io and docker-mailsever,which both look good. Running your mailserver in a container or VM is almost essential, for security, and so you can blow it away and start over if you make a mistake.
Running an email server is not necessarily hard, but it is stressful: if you have other users, even family, they will take it for granted when it works, and complain loudly when it does not. Like any server that others use. But, beyond security, I have a certain stubborn geek machismo about it, it’s a level of sysadmin above basic.
You can do calendar and contacts separate from email. Try Radicale. I’ve been using it for years.
I like NixOS Mailserver
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The couple of domains have been running on my company so the userbase is already there, but as I’m shutting down the business side they need to move to something else. And I don’t really care if users want to switch to something else, that’s not my problem.
Has anyone here used Mox? It looks interesting, but maybe a little immature.
