E-Mail with own domain

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Gobbel2000@programming.dev⁩ to ⁨selfhosting@slrpnk.net⁩

I was thinking about how to improve my email situation, because at the moment I am using an address of a commercial mail provider, which obviously brings some concerns of lock-in.

While fully self-hosting the email is an option, I am a bit wary of this, because having a working email is very critical and I do trust the commercial providers to give better uptime and reliability than my old server in the closet. Does anyone have experience hosting an email service and what is it like/could you recommend it?

The other option that I am more inclined to is having the email hosted by some cloud provider, but using an address under my personal domain name. The point would be of course that I could change the email provider while keeping the address. Which providers supporting this could you recommend? What is the process like linking a domain to an email host?

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Zetta@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I do this!

I use purelymail, it’s only $10 a year and self described as a “Cheap, no-nonsense email” i’ve been using this service for a little over a year with my own domain names and haven’t had any issues yet. I love it. They have an easy to follow tutorial for setting up your own domain names to work with their email

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JoMiran@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I use my own domains with Proton.

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Zachariah@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If you decide to run everything yourself, Run Your Own Mail Server by Michael W Lucas is a recent and comprehensive book on the topic.

But for most people in your situation, email aliases (forwarders) do your domain pointed at an email provider is the best option. I’ve used this setup for decades. On top of being able to swap the back end when you want, you can also spin up aliases whenever you want, so you could decide each entity you interact with a different email address. That way if it starts getting spam, you know who betrayed you.

Currently, my top two email provider recommendations are FastMail and Proton.

My web host went from allowing a catch-all, so I could just make up aliases on the fly to making me configure each alias manually. So I also use MXRoute’s forwarding service to enable catch-alls on a couple domains. I used a coupon and paid for like ten years upfront.

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- tvcvt@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Excellent advice on Lucas’s book!
  
  Another email provider that I’ve used for years and have had good experiences with is Zoho.
  
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drive_desaster@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I hosted my email myself with mailu iirc. Once I had it setup and working correctly my only problem was that any mails I send would end in the recipients spam folder (Probably because the IP of the server I used was from an ASN that allowed anyone to host a mail server without restrictions).

I moved to mxroute a few months ago and payed 30$ for 3 years. They let you bring your own domains (unlimited at no charge). I’m happy and didnt have any problems so far but their website for ordering is borderline unusable if you want to compare their plans/prices.

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tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I started using purelymail.com because they’re $10/year. Been happy with them, but I don’t use/need any fancy features. Hosted on AWS, if you care about that. Their domain instructions are purelymail.com/docs/domainDocs

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- Gobbel2000@programming.dev ⁨53⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Thanks, the docs you linked really made it clear how the domain is connected in practice.
  
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Zier@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have multiple domains (and many email addresses) that I pay a host (Namecheap) for. I have the lowest priced annual hosting package. And email is administered through cPanel, not the separate email service they offer. cPanel is very easy to use and you get spam controls. I also fetch my pop3 mail with Thunderbird. I have done this for 15+ years and rarely have I had an issue or missed email. cPanel is part of your hosting package.

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amos@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I use my own domain. I do not host my own email myself though. You have several options, Migadu being one of them. But pretty much all premium email providers nowadays allow you to use your own domain.

For aliases, I would recommend something like Addy. It is basically a forwarding service, that hides your real email address. It is really cool. Spamgourmet used to do this back in the day, but nowadays it is mostly dead.

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suzune@ani.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve been hosting my own email server having 4 domains (one is business-related) for 6 years. I don’t have any problems, because I know what I do.

In case it’s a help. The stack is: Postfix (SPF-support), Dovecot (Sieve), OpenDKIM, OpenDMARC and rspamd. I also recommend fail2ban, because an open infrastructure is hammered on very often.

Of course TLS is needed, so nginx with acme.sh as combo does the job fine.

Backups are also essential. I like restic. CLI tools are automated very easy.

I don’t think, it’s much. My setup is very generic, but maybe it’s already too overwhelming for some people.

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- a14o@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I have a very similar setup and it’s been running without major hiccups for years.
  
  I’ve been hearing the same tales of caution ever since I got my hands on that SUSE CD-ROM. I’m definitely much more careful when touching the setup compared to other stuff I self host, but it’s not impossible or anything.
  
  It’s not something one should hurry. Read up on all the standards and documentation, set them up step by step with a throwaway domain. Avoid the big no-nos from the very beginning: Make sure to never accept relay submissions from unauthenticated users, and don’t bounce anything off-server.
  
  It’s been a fun journey for me, and I always find it a bit sad when people who might be interested to learn are immediately discouraged. If you feel like giving it try, go for it!
  
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  - keepthepace@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thanks, that brings some optimism! It is indeed a common wisdom that email is almost impossible to self-host. If you have some good information to dispell that myth, it would be great if you could make a post about it here!
    
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Flax_vert@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have hosted my own email before. It can get a bit annoying and it’s not the most reliable.

I definitely recommend at least starting with your own domain. That way you can move emails easily. It’s relatively straightforward, although if you have it on a gmail account you need to disable 2fa for some reason…

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zaphod@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
A lot of providers support custom domains, I’m currently using mailbox.org, used proton, zoho and google in the past. The process is usually just adding some dns records to link your domain to your mail provider and to verify that the domain belongs to you, every provider should have a list of instructions on how to do it.

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berber@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
you are correct in being wary of self-hosting email, i cannot recommend it. you definitely want a static IP (as oppoased to updating DNS entries all the time), a solid spam setup, and multiple failsafes, mesning not just data backup, but also mechanisms for preventing downtime like secondary machines. it really is only worth it if multiple people make use of it and you have multiple dedicated admins, in my opinion.

as others have pointed out, use something like mailbox.org with your own domain, or other providers, or even a webhosting package from netcup or hetzner or similar. these are all solid and you have professional support.

side note: downside is, your data there is more snoopable, less so with something like proton. but that shouldn’t be your biggest worry, since emails always exist not just on your server, but also on the other side of the communication, and you have no guatantees for privacy there. e2ee (like pgp) is what you would need in that case.

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- Gobbel2000@programming.dev ⁨34⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  Yeah, that’s kind of what I thought, and if dynamic DNS is a problem then that already rules out self-hosting for me.
  
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- the_crotch@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  you would definitely want a static IP (as opposed to updating DNS entries all the time)
  
  Also any IP from a dynamic range is going to make spam filters lose their shit
  
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poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As others have said already, email is one of the few things I would avoid self-hosting.

You could check with your domain / DNS host if they also offer email. OVH for example gives a free 5GB email for every domain. Otherwise there are of course email providers that let you use your own domain.

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