Self hosting an email

Midtownsurname

How do I get into this? Where do I buy a domain? Which ones are the best options? Do I have to run a NAS or something like that? Can I still get google services if I sign up with my own email? (Mainly because I want to get access to YouTube) Can I transfer my steam account to this self hosted email?
I know, that's a lot of questions but I don't where else should I ask, I would appreciate any kind of help, thx

n3t_admin

Midtownsurname Few questions: do you plan to run this on a residential IP? Do you have access to a static IPv4 address?

Also, what is the threat model here? Just having your own mail domain?

Eirikr70

Midtownsurname An email is the last thing that you self-host when you have successfully set up a self-hosted system. It is the hardest part and having a residential subscription is very often an inescapable obstacle to having your mail delivered. There are tutorials about that, but according to your questions, you are certainly not ready to start that trip.

thmf

Midtownsurname take a look at
Iredmail. It has greylists which will cut >90% of spam (unless you leave your email address everywhere in the open).
Host on a vps, not at home. You could try Hetzner cloud hosting. It's cheap and let's you do things like PTR.

JaneDoeth

Midtownsurname
For a beginner, I would recommend using susimail from i2p with PGP and Thunderbird. AFAIK, it's really the only way to have anonymous email, other than self hosting, which is difficult and tedious to do well.
If you want a guide, RTP Tech Tips on YouTube has a few excellent videos detailing how and why to set this up. It's not too difficult.

r134a

Eirikr70 An email is the last thing that you self-host when you have successfully set up a self-hosted system. It is the hardest part

I agree, and it's not really worth the hassle in my opinion. Even if u got everything set up smoothly, there's a high probability your sent emails will arrive directly in spam folders, without much u can do about it.

mrket

Eirikr70 A mail server was one of the first things I set up for myself (on a VPS though, not my home network), I didn't know what I was doing at all and yet the same mail server is still in use by me to this day, years later.

It is important to read up about what is required to not get blocked by other providers, but it really isn't that hard at all, I found many other types of services much harder to set up in practice.

n3t_admin

r134a it's not really worth the hassle in my opinion

that really depends. Having your server sitting at home? Absolutely not.
Having a rented server/VPS? Completely different story.
Once you get your PTR, SPF, DKIM and DMARC down - the rest is a piece of cake. As long as your ISP takes care of security of course. But with a residential IP you are SOL as you're on Spamhaus policy blocklists by default for most ISPs.

Best solutions are either
1) Hosted mail (but ISPs have access to that most of the time)
2) Modern solutions like the iCloud "own domain" option where it points DNS records towards your iCloud mail. Works surprisingly well actually.

r134a

n3t_admin that really depends. Having your server sitting at home? Absolutely not.

Yes my comment was mostly based on that lovely experience.

TrustExecutor

n3t_admin
There is a third option. If you have a stable internet connection at home with a stable, well configured server running behind an UPS, and you have high historical uptime, then you can rent a cloud VPS and a domain name from a provider with good IP reputation and use that as a proxy for your server to reach the broader internet. Set up a wireguard tunnel to the VPS instance and you're good to go. That said, make sure you set up your DNS records straight and follow best practices for running servers in general.

There are several easy-to-use mail servers that do most of the configuration for you, like mailcow and mail-in-a-box.

Make sure you use a domain name that is not freshly registered (or has been used by spammers before) as that can trigger spam filters. There are a lot of guides online on how to not make your emails end up in the junk folder.

de0u

n3t_admin Once you get your PTR, SPF, DKIM and DMARC down - the rest is a piece of cake.

The last time I was involved in spam filtering, that part was not a piece of cake. Has it been solidly solved? One issue with doing it at home is that filtering "near the mailbox", after the mail has been 100% received, means that it has already eaten up downlink bandwidth, so there is a risk of getting DoS'd.

n3t_admin

TrustExecutor I mean, sure - you can. But why would I (or anyone) resort to this (really fucking complicated) setup when there is no real upside to this over renting a VPS? The amount of mistakes you can make configuring this, is huge. If someone were to give me the task of setting that up, I would honestly send them to hell lmao

Eirikr70

mrket My post was an answer to OP. I also have my own email server at home. I love it although it doesn't deliver to gmail or others because I can't set up the reverse DNS. But considering the questions asked by OP, a firm answer seemed best to me. Now if you want to help OP, please do!

n3t_admin

Eirikr70 doesn't deliver to gmail

My home server delivered to GMail... straight to the spam folder, but it arrived. I was surprised myself. iCloud Mail however... yeeted my mails out of existence. Just bounced and nothing you can do. They're just ruthless lmao

mrket

Eirikr70 My point was that setting up an email server doesn't have to be "the last thing" you do, I had many of the same questions as OP, I just asked a search engine instead of a forum (which is my advice to OP as well); there is an extreme wealth of information on this topic online which I could never replicate here.

Midtownsurname

mrket

mrket So what are some of the sites I should look up? Like forums, blogs and tutorials

Eirikr70

Midtownsurname Since you seem to be mad enough ...
You need an infrastructure. I recommend a Debian light server (light means that you don't have a desktop, just command-line ; that's the best way to learn and understand what you're doing). If you are not comfortable with the command-line, buy a book about it and start tinkering, to learn (my first setup was a Samba share and a VPN, and it took me weeks to build it and understand what I was doing).
Then you might be interested in understanding Docker (if you want to host something else in the future ; if you just want an email server it might be useless).
A guide without Docker : https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/setup-basic-postfix-mail-sever-ubuntu
With Docker : https://www.ionos.fr/digitalguide/email/aspects-techniques/configurer-un-serveur-mail-avec-docker/
You might be willing to refer to the first one for some steps even if you go with Docker, since it is more comprehensive.

mrket

Midtownsurname I honestly don't feel comfortable giving exact recommendations, as I don't see myself as an expert on this topic at all, and the research I did was long ago at this point.

I will say I use an OpenBSD server with the built-in SMTP daemon, combined with dovecot for IMAP; I find this easy to use and maintain, but it might not be the best choice.

n3t_admin

An actually good tutorial to start out, is SimpleLogin.
Since they have an option to self-host via Docker, they also have a comprehensive guide on how to do that (with explanations!)

Take a look.

This is more for learning purposes, not production.

r134a

I addition to what @Eirikr70 said, if u want to selfhost maybe more stuff in the future and your plan was to use a home server, i'd recommend getting familiar with a hypervisor first (like proxmox). That's a good way to learn and when u are setting up a service u could make a snapshot or backup of your vm/lxc before every change. If u f*ck up something (which will happen), it's relatively easy to revert to an earlier snapshot/backup.

Eirikr70

After participating in this thread I have been testing my mail server and it seems that my ISP has closed port 25 so I can't send any external email. I will keep the server for internal purposes like alerts or password re-generation. But it is a sad day in my self-hosting journey.