Post by Riley S. Faelan

I #Selfhost my email server (that handles my 20+ domains) since almost 20 years now, currently on a cheap virtual machine running Linux, with 1 CPU core, 2G of RAM, 40G hard drive and unlimited network traffic which costs me less than €5/month.

Many people keep on telling me that running your own email server is more or less impossible. I simply don't listen to them.

I explained my setup in a blog series starting at https://jan.wildeboer.net/2022/08/Email-0-The-Journey-2022/

#DigitalAutonomy @homelab

No webmail, only simple SMTP/IMAP with Postfix and Dovecot. All incoming mails are stored encrypted, all traffic uses TLS with a LetsEncrypt certificate. DKIM, SPF is configured. Admin work consists of keeping the OS and firewall up2date, this means maybe 1-2 hours in total per month. I am not saying you can also do that (I have a lot of experience). But I am saying that those skills can be learned and result in a lot less worries about being reachable :)

#DigitalAutonomy #SelfHost @homelab

@jwildeboer @homelab I had this exact setup until an update broke my postfix config and smtpd failed to start. I didn't notice for almost a week since dovecot was still working and I don't receive a lot of emails each day. I'll never know how many emails I have missed during that period. I'm not saying it's impossible, but when you're new to these things it's hard to know when you've learned enough to self-host reliably enough. Now I still host my website, but I pay soverin to take care of my email. It's worth the peace of mind.

@trxxruraxvr I use the postfix and dovecot versions from the operating system (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and in my 20 years have never experienced updates breaking my setup. But I would also get an alarm from my monitoring setup latest after 15 minutes of my mail server not accepting connections for IMAP and/or SMTP :) @homelab

@jwildeboer @trxxruraxvr @homelab

The problem isn't that selfhosting email is impossible. It's that selfhosting email requires a level of babysitting that _almost_ nobody is willing to put up with for long. People generally do not want to setup DKIM and SPF only to find out later that now they have to setup DMARC. People generally do not want to spend a couple of hours getting their mail server working again because their Dovecot v2.3 config file is totally not compatible with Dovecot v2.4. People generally do not want to run a half dozen applications pasted together with peanut butter and chewing gum for what appears to be a single service. People generally do not want to figure out what is required to make custom spam evaluation rules because 5-10 spams a month is an unacceptable level of garbage. People generally do not want to spend days or weeks trying to get Microsoft to quit flagging them as spam even after jumping through their SNDS hoops. People generally do not want to invest more time managing a protocol/service that gets slightly less relevant every year.

I selfhost email... and I also do it with Postfix and Dovecot. I just realize that compared to a relatively hands-off service such as Prosody for XMPP or nginx for http/https (hopefully without PHP) running a mail server is a big hassle that many people are just not willing to put up with. And anyone who has accidentally turned their box in to an open relay, isn't going to be very motivated to get back on the horse. Don't get me wrong, I think people SHOULD selfhost email and that people saying "selfhosting email is impossible" should shut the fuck up... I just think that anything instructing people to selfhost email should come with the disclaimer that it is more of a pain in the arse than most services.

PS: Yes, the Dovecot v2.3 to v2.4 upgrade will very likely break things unless you create a new config file in advance.

My three cents. ™️

@jmhorner I think I did all of that in my blog post series. It is littered with warnings "Here will be dragons" and that is not a simple install-and-forget thing. That it needs commitment and the willingness to learn. But I also think that making the knowledge needed accessible instead of treating it as some secret knowledge is the only way forward. @trxxruraxvr @homelab