Is it worth it to host your own mail?

tladuke · 2010-03-01 22:53:38

Or, suggest good IMAP hosts.
Besides fastmail; I know about fastmail.fm.

Trying to get off of gmail...

Stythys · 2010-03-01 22:58:02

why get off of gmail?

rebugger · 2010-03-01 23:00:00

The only alternative to gmail is hosting your own mailserver.

pyther · 2010-03-01 23:01:16

Worth it, that could be argued. I host my own mail and I am quite satisfied with the end result. I decided to host my own mail for a few reasons: security + safety (complete control) and learning.

Software:
Dovecot-Sieve (IMAP server with sieve support)
Postfix (Mail Delivery)
Thunderbird (IMAP client, application)
Roundcube (IMAP client, web based)
Spamassassian (Spam filter)

Downsides: Net connection goes down / power outage you might lose a message (usually gets resent a few times though)

Since most home connection have a dynamic ip you will still need to use a smtp server, be that your isp's, gmail's, or some other server.

I have 2 gmail addresses and 1 university address. I use all three accounts exclusively. I have any mail that is sent to said account to be forwarded to my own address and deleted from the server.

sand_man · 2010-03-02 00:16:26

I use fetchmail to collect many mailboxes of mine and deliver to a Maildir on my server which I then host IMAP using dovecot. The main reason why I did this is the email host I use doesn't host IMAP on the plan I'm on (GoDaddy )

Edit, sorry I didn't really answer the OP's question there.
I would say no its not worth it unless you have a reason to do so. My reason is that I can't live with POP because I access my email from many different locations. It's also nice if you have multiple accounts (who doesn't?) to have them all centralised.

Last edited by sand_man (2010-03-02 00:32:48)

Peasantoid · 2010-03-02 00:24:26

If you have more or less constant ssh access to the server, just install and set up postfix (it's simpler than you might think), then use a command-line mail client such as mutt. I don't use any sort of web interface.

tladuke · 2010-03-02 02:36:46

Peasantoid wrote:

If you have more or less constant ssh access to the server, just install and set up postfix (it's simpler than you might think), then use a command-line mail client such as mutt. I don't use any sort of web interface.

Are there any decent VPSs these days that I can get for less than a $40/year fastmail (the only plan that lets me use my own domain)

Man dealing with spam, postfix... I'm pretty sure I know it's the hugest hassle possible.

ooh, fastmail family plan

Last edited by tladuke (2010-03-02 02:40:28)

Peasantoid · 2010-03-02 02:49:16

tladuke wrote:

Are there any decent VPSs these days that I can get for less than a $40/year fastmail (the only plan that lets me use my own domain)

Not to my knowledge. If mail is all you're going to be using it for, go cheap. That said, Linode is pretty damn good in my opinion (and they have Arch images!).

tladuke wrote:

Man dealing with spam, postfix... I'm pretty sure I know it's the hugest hassle possible.

Postfix feels a bit archaic, but it works well without too much setup. Many tutorials out there.

sand_man · 2010-03-02 05:32:10

Archaic? Postfix is relatively new compared to other MTA's like sendmail.

Peasantoid · 2010-03-02 05:35:19

I don't know, 12 years seems pretty old to me.

PirateJonno · 2010-03-02 09:56:26

well, how much has email changed in the last 12 years?
for the record, I run postfix standalone with evolution as a maildir client. occasionally miss a message but not nearly as many as my completely useless ISP does (Telecom NZ)

tss · 2010-03-02 18:08:55

In terms of cheap VPSs, there isn't anyone better than prgmr: http://prgmr.com/xen/. However, it's not for the feint of heart. You can get Arch on there with a bit of work.

Two major issues with hosting your own mail:
* Currently nothing in open source is even close to Gmail's user interface.
* If you don't know anything about securing a system, your mailserver will probably be insecure. If it gets hacked, all of your mail is exposed. All providers like Gmail and Fastmail have professionals on staff who handle this for you.

jt512 · 2010-03-02 18:40:11

Postfix? Worth it. Sendmail? Bwahahaha....

Jay

pyther · 2010-03-02 18:41:35

IMO roundcube works well for webmail and thunderbird 3.0 makes mailing lists a breeze to read.

@tss I'm interested in your aspect of how mail servers are insecure. Would you care to elaborate? I run postfix and dovecot and keep them up to date what much is there to security for these platforms?

ak-89 · 2010-03-02 19:03:08

tss wrote:

In terms of cheap VPSs, there isn't anyone better than prgmr: http://prgmr.com/xen/. However, it's not for the feint of heart. You can get Arch on there with a bit of work.

http://www.ramhost.us/

This is cheaper, I don't know about reliability or performance when compared to others, but it works. I have vps on ramhost, but I mainly just play(installing stuff, configuring it, learning etc) with it. Ping is little high from Finland, but it's cheapest I found and works. And you can select Arch for your OS. It uses OpenVZ, so you can't have other OS than Linux, custom kernel or swap.

tss · 2010-03-02 20:09:09

pyther wrote:

@tss I'm interested in your aspect of how mail servers are insecure. Would you care to elaborate? I run postfix and dovecot and keep them up to date what much is there to security for these platforms?

As a general rule of thumb, the more network services you run, the more vulnerable you are. More programs are exposed to attackers so the attack surface in which to find vulnerabilities is larger. For mail server you need to run SSH, POP3/IMAP (potentially), and SMTP. Even if you put SSH on a high number port and don't use POP3/IMAP, the fact that you have an SMTP service makes your server a higher priority target than other servers running simpler services like HTTP.

Specifically, there are a ton of things to mess up. Here are a few:
* Authentication to POP3/IMAP and SMTP done in the clear. Vulnerable to sniffing.
* Authentication to POP3/IMAP and SMTP done using a self signed certificate. Vulnerable to man in the middle attacks.
* Running a mail transfer agent with a history of security problems (i.e. Sendmail). Qmail or Postfix are the correct choices here. Vulnerable to the latest zero day and recent published exploits. Professionals have an array of tricks (ex: chroot) to lessen the impact of exploits. They also run network intrusion detection systems to stop malicious traffic before it ever reaches the mailserver.

These things can be an inconvenience:
* The need to deploy your own spam filtering using Spam Assassin or some other method. Open source options are simply less effective than Gmail's spam filtering.
* The possibility of your outbound mail being flagged as spam. Filters trust SMTP servers managed by Google more than one running on some random IP. Also, misconfigurations in your domain name and in the SMTP server can make it seem like you are spoofing the sender address even though you are legitimate.
* If your SMTP server gets compromised and starts sending SPAM, it's a personal problem. You don't have corporate lawyers to handle it for you.

pyther · 2010-03-02 20:18:57

Thanks.

You bring up some good points.

I send my mail through gmail's server as I have a dynamic ip and most mail services will drop mail from dynamic ips. Also I keep my imap server accessible only through my lan and use roundcube to access my mail remotely.

CountDuckula · 2010-03-02 20:40:07

PirateJonno wrote:

well, how much has email changed in the last 12 years?
for the record, I run postfix standalone with evolution as a maildir client. occasionally miss a message but not nearly as many as my completely useless ISP does (Telecom NZ)

So you are the guy with Telecom broadband, I'd heard a rumour there was someone using it still...

tss · 2010-03-02 20:45:23

pyther wrote:

Thanks.
You bring up some good points.
I send my mail through gmail's server as I have a dynamic ip and most mail services will drop mail from dynamic ips. Also I keep my imap server accessible only through my lan and use roundcube to access my mail remotely.

Seems like you've got the basics down then. Nice job. The last thing to check would be to make sure you log in to roundcube over HTTPS.

PirateJonno · 2010-03-02 20:47:26

CountDuckula wrote:

So you are the guy with Telecom broadband, I'd heard a rumour there was someone using it still...

hahaha, yeah well unfortunately they still have the cheapest prices. not for long though I hope, what with this XT debacle

CountDuckula · 2010-03-02 20:51:42

Has anyone used the AllardSoft Mailserver? It's a VMWare appliance based on OpenBSD and has a free option, hosting 1 domain and 10 user accounts. I tried it for a test a while back and it seemed ok.

jt512 · 2010-03-03 02:52:10

pyther wrote:

I send my mail through gmail's server as I have a dynamic ip and most mail services will drop mail from dynamic ips.

In my albeit limited experience, this is not true. I've been running a mail server on a dyndns.org domain for the last couple of years and, so far, I've been able to use my own SMTP server to send mail to all domains, except one—sbcglobal.net.

Jay

tladuke · 2010-03-03 03:14:21

tss wrote:

In terms of cheap VPSs, there isn't anyone better than prgmr: http://prgmr.com/xen/. However, it's not for the feint of heart. You can get Arch on there with a bit of work.
Two major issues with hosting your own mail:
* Currently nothing in open source is even close to Gmail's user interface.
* If you don't know anything about securing a system, your mailserver will probably be insecure. If it gets hacked, all of your mail is exposed. All providers like Gmail and Fastmail have professionals on staff who handle this for you.

thanks for all the replies guys. for what it's worth, i'm going to be using mutt or something, so i won't miss the gmail web interface.

Anikom15 · 2010-03-03 04:35:06

* Currently nothing in open source is even close to Gmail's user interface.

What? Web interfaces are horrid.

Peasantoid · 2010-03-03 04:54:32

Anikom15 wrote:

* Currently nothing in open source is even close to Gmail's user interface.
What? Web interfaces are horrid.

This, of course, is the opinion of a seasoned, hardcore Arch user. You have to take into account that perhaps tss's outlook is different from your own.

Also, we could easily get into a 'user-friendly' vs. 'good' debate, but I don't think that would be wise.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-03-01 22:53:38

Is it worth it to host your own mail?

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