Email server

WetGeek

The company that has hosted my email account(s) for many years also does web hosting, and that's a service I don't need, but they don't provide an email server separately. So, I'm wondering what would be involved to add a low-volume email server to my server that seeds torrents.

I own the wetgeek.net domain, and storage is no problem - I have about 18 TB free on my NAS at present. It would seem that I'd need to pay some provider to feed email to my server, but I have no idea what I should ask for.

Does anyone here operate their own email server, and could give me a brief overview of what's involved, and what to avoid? Thanks for any help with this.

EDIT: Since I wrote this, I found out that my Synology NAS has a Synology email server that I can install. I still have the question of "how can I get email INTO my email server". I haven't found anywhere else to find an answer to that yet.

seagle

I'm not really sure but I think all you need is an MX record in your wetgeek.net domain that points to your mail server which is responsible for accepting e-mails.

Currently they seem to be pointing to some spamexperts.com hosts: https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=mx%3awetgeek.net&run=toolpage

WetGeek

seagle I think all you need is an MX record in your wetgeek.net domain that points to your mail server

Thanks for your reply. After another conversation with my contact at the service provider, they agreed to lower the cost since I was using just the email services, and not the web server. I agreed to their offer, and as a result I'm set for the next five years. That will give me more time to learn what I need to know.

I have a book on Linux System Administration, and the chapter on setting up an email server seemed pretty daunting, but that may be because they were addressing doing that in a large-ish corporate IT department. It may turn out to be much simpler to set up one to serve just a few of us. I believe a lot of the details had to do with hardening it against all possible threats.

DataDrake

WetGeek Mail servers are notoriously hard to admin, especially when it comes to security and not accidentally becoming a spam relay.

WetGeek

DataDrake security and not accidentally becoming a spam relay

Yep. The one I use intentionally doesn't use traditional well known ports for that reason. I've run an Apache server at home before I lost interest in doing web development, but I'll probably leave the mail server to the experts. It's almost certainly too much trouble for the two of us who would use it. Better suited to a team of IT pros.

Girtablulu

WetGeek I was thinking once as well about a mailserver and a good friend (who does it professional) said - Don't do it, and said the same as DataDrake reg problems and some more.

At the end I rather pay a few bugs and don't have to care reg all the issues 🙂

jrsilvey

WetGeek

Data Drake said it above but I will reiterate it.. Running an email server is -hard- even if it's just one or two emails on a small domain.

I will tell you what I tell individuals running for elected office when I consult for them..

Use Protonmail.

Protonmail is free for their basic email service but when you upgrade to their Plus plan you get 5Gb of mail storage, 1 custom domain, and 5 extra email addresses. You also get access to the ProtonMail Bridge (available as a FlatPak)

You will have your protonmail account name@protonmail.com and then when you set up the MX records on Protonmail for your domain and all of the setup you will be able to create you@wetgeek.net and up to four other mail accounts. These email addresses function more like email aliases because they route all of the addresses you create through your main protonmail account.

Once you set that up all of your email will be handled by Protonmail from there on out. They are extremely secure and don't track or have access to your emails. They are based on Switzerland. Here is a list of security features that come with their service. .

The ProtonMail Bridge I mentioned above is relevant when using a third-party email client. As far as I know you are supposed to be able to use Protonmail with Evolution and Geary (Im not sure about Thunderbird). I was only able to get the Bridge to work with Geary. The Bridge encrypts and decrypts mail as it is coming in and out of your mailbox and allows your email client to access everything. Some people would rather use ElectronMail which is an unofficial Protonmail client (honestly, this option is easiest for checking mail).

It costs 48 dollars a year but this is one of my can't live without features. I use them in exactly the way you described with a personal domain and I am very happy with their service.. never, ever had an issue with my mail since I started using them.

DataDrake

jrsilvey I know it's less than popular around here, but I've been very happy with Google Apps for Business/G Suite/Google Workspace over the years. 6$/user/mo and all I had to do was set an MX record for my domain and add a few other sub-domains because I wanted to.

WetGeek

jrsilvey Use Protonmail.

Sounds like an excellent choice. As I've mentioned, I'll be using the same provider for the next five years as I've used for many years already. But when it comes time to figure out what I should do from that time on, I'll certainly consider Protonmail.

I'm a retired software engineer (geek) from a part of the US where it's said to rain all the time (wet), ergo, the domain name I chose. It's important to me that I remain able to keep that domain, and Protonmail would allow that.

Just to be clear to everyone: After researching options, I'm thoroughly convinced that I do not want to operate my own email server. Thanks to everyone who's helped me to decide.

jrsilvey

DataDrake

That is a good option that has a large adoption among developers. For a big enterprise GSuite is great. Microsoft 365 is excellent for collaborative work as well. There isn't anything inherently wrong with services like GSuite or Microsoft 365. It's all about choice!

For smaller businesses, from my personal experience, Zoho is a great option. I like their stance on privacy while still offering great collaborative online tools and cloud management. Zoho is surprisingly well represented amongst integration services like IFTTT and Zapier as well.

Protonmail is solely focused on email routing and as an open-source activist and political organizer I feel much more secure with a company based in Switzerland that does not have the ability to read the emails I am sending regarding my activist email account. Since most of the individuals I consult with work in the political sphere that is why Protonmail is usually at the top of my list to suggest.

On a personal note I just installed Nextcloud 20 on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4Gb) using Docker and I have to say.. it's running great. I am using the ARM64 architecture. It was very, very difficult at first (mostly because I had to understand every minute detail) but the experience and final product have made me extremely happy.

All of my Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, and Notes are routed through Nextcloud. I still use an Android phone but I was happy to support independent developers and grab the DAVx3 and OneCalendar apps for use on my phone. There is full Dropbox-style cloud storage functionality and if something unexpected were to happen the device is right on my desk and it would be easy to just reach over and hit the power button. Nextcloud does have a Mail app that allows importing IMAP accounts if you wanted to use a work email that way.

davidjharder

I've been using https://purelymail.com/ for a while now for my personal domain. It is exceptionally cheap for me because it can be billed based on usage. Something like ~$1/month

jrsilvey

Well..

I know that you like to tinker. Since you won't be trying to operate mail on a production machine I thought I would throw you something to tinker with in development if you ever get bored.

Proxmox VE is a complete open-source platform for enterprise virtualization. With the built-in web interface you can easily manage VMs and containers, software-defined storage and networking, high-availability clustering, and multiple out-of-the-box tools on a single solution.

Proxmox Mail Gateway is the leading open-source email security solution helping you to protect your mail server against all email threats from the moment they emerge. The flexible architecture combined with the userfriendly, web-based management interface, allows IT professionals and businesses to control all incoming and outgoing emails with ease, and to protect their users from spam, viruses, phishing and trojans.

Organizations of any size can easily deploy and implement the anti-spam and anti-virus platform in just a few minutes. The full featured mail proxy is deployed between the firewall and the internal mail server, and allows to control all email traffic from a single platform. Proxmox helps you to easily maintain a secure and professional email communication, ensure business continuity, and gain high business reputation as well as customer satisfaction.

This seems like something you might have a ton of fun with.