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Self-hosted or personal email solutions?

I have a unique name, think John Doe, and I'm hoping to create a unique and "professional" looking email account like johndoe@gmail.com or john@doe.com. Since my name is common, all reasonable permutations are taken. I was considering purchasing a domain with something unique, then making personal family email accounts for john@mydoe.com jane@mydoe.com etc.

Consider that I'm starting from scratch (I am). Is there a preferred domain registrar, are GoDaddy or NameCheap good enough? Are there prebuilt services I can just point my domain to or do I need to spin up a VPS and install my own services? Are there concerns tying my accounts to a service that might go under or are some "too big to fail"?

I can expand what hangs off the domain later, but for now I just need a way to make my own email addresses and use them with the relative ease of Gmail or others. Thanks in advance!!

grepe ,

I tried both hosting my own mail server and using a paid mail hosting with my own domain and I advise against the former.

The reason not to roll out your own mail server is that your email might go to spam at many many common mail services. Servers and domains that don't usually send out big amount of email are considered suspicious by spam filters and the process of letting other mail servers know that they are there by sending out emails is called warming them up. It's hard and it takes time... Also, why would you think you can do hosting better than a professional that is paid for that? Let someone else handle that.

With your own domain you are also not bound to one provider - you can change both domain registrar and your email hosting later without changing your email address.

Also, avoid using something too unusual. I went with firstname@lastname.email cause I thought it couldn't be simpler than that. Bad idea... and I can't count how many times people send mail to a wrong address because such tld is unfamiliar. I get told by web forms regularly that my email is not a valid address and even people that got my email written on a piece of paper have replaced the .email with .gmail.com cause "that couldn't be right"...

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

I get told by web forms regularly that my email is not a valid address and even people that got my email written on a piece of paper have replaced the .email with .gmail.com cause “that couldn’t be right”…

That's the thing that holds me back from a non-standard TLD, as much as I'd love to get a vanity domain.

I've got a .org I've had for over 20 years now. My primary email address has been on that domain for almost as long. While I don't have problems with web-based forms, telling people my email address is a chore at best since it's not gmail, outlook, yahoo, etc...

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

I don't give my personal email address to literally anyone. Everyone gets an alias.

Once someone gets your personal email address and leaks it, there is no way to stop spam. You cannot delete your personal address because it is your account identity.

Firefox Relay, AnonAddy, SimpleLogin, all great services.

I have a business email address that I'm just unfortunately stuck digging through spam.

bdonvr ,

Use Cloudflare or PorkBun.com for cheap, no bullshit domains. As for the email host, self hosting not recommended. It's a long battle to be not blocked by every other provider.

I recommend purelymail.com - no cost to add (even multiple!) custom domains, unlimited users, only pay for mail usage and storage. Go for advanced pricing until it starts costing you more than $10/yr. (Which it shouldn't if it's just you. Seriously this thing is cheap!) I just passed my one year anniversary with PurelyMail, and have spent $6 so far. This is my most expensive month, 85¢. And that's only because I host a public Lemmy instance (small) and we had a few hundred spam signups which sends an email each time.

https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/5b7bd21e-1301-4186-9a9f-8821108ea519.png

This will give you a total yearly price WAY under what Google or Microsoft will give you. Google is like, $7.20/user/month.

And if for some reason that service goes down one day, as long as you still have a mail client with your email stored in it you should be able to just switch providers and import your emails from your client. Make some backups.

lemmyvore ,

For anybody interested in more choices for volume-based providers like PurelyMail (with tiers based on storage and emails sent/received but who otherwise allow unlimited domains/mailboxes/aliases) there's also MXRoute (US) and Migadu (Swiss/EU).

These providers don't usually make sense for a single mailbox (although some of them have a low entry tier for this purpose) but can be extremely cost-efficient if you need 2 or more mailboxes/domains.

rar ,

I was very tempted to go for this one, but couldn't find info on whether this was a one-man operation or if there are any disaster recovery plans. Sounds cruel, but if that one single guy my email depends on gets hit by a bus...

bdonvr ,

It is. But as said, for personal email what's the huge risk? You find a new provider, transfer your DNS records, and upload your old emails.

Make some backups of your emails, you should be anyway.

But they have a specific FAQ for this: https://purelymail.com/docs/companyPolicy#bus

rar ,

Makes sense. I'm happy with my current provider but purelymail is a strong candidate for if I'm out of options.

ChrislyBear ,

Do NOT self-host email! In the long run, you'll forget a security patch, someone breaches your server, blasts out spam and you'll end up on every blacklist imaginable with your domain and server.

Buy a domain, DON'T use GoDaddy, they are bastards. I'd suggest OVH for European domains or Cloudflare for international ones.

After you have your domain, register with "Microsoft 365" or "Google Workspace" (I'd avoid Google, they don't have a stable offering) or any other E-Mail-Provider that allows custom domains.

Follow their instructions on how to connect your domain to their service (a few MX and TXT records usually suffice) and you're done.

After that, you can spin up a VPS and try out new stuff and connect it also to your domain (A and CNAMR records).

lily33 ,

That said, you can use a third party service only for sending, but receive mail on your self-hosted server.

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

I've been successfully using SES for a couple years now without issue.

domi ,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

Do you have more details on your setup?

I currently selfhost mailcow on a small VPS but I would like to move the receiving part to my homelab and only use a small VPS or service like SES for sending.

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

I set this up a couple years ago but I seem to remember AWS walking me through the initial setup.

First you'll need to configure your domain(s) in SES. It requires you to set some DNS records to verify ownership. You'll also need to configure your SPF record(s) to allow email to be sent through SES. They provide you with all of this information.

Next, you'll need to configure SES credentials or it won't accept mail from your servers. From a security standpoint, if you have multiple SMTP servers I would give each a unique set of credentials but you can get away with one for simplicity.

Finally you'll need to configure your MTA to relay through SES. If you use postfix here's a quick guide:
https://medium.com/@cloudinit/sending-emails-with-postfix-and-amazon-ses-2341489a97e2

I've got postfix configured on each of my VPS servers, plus and internal relay, to relay all mail through SES. To the best of my knowledge it's worked fine. I haven't had issues with mail getting dropped or flagged as SPAM.

There is a cost, but with my email volumes (which are admittedly low) it costs me 2-3 cents a month.

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

@avguser

I'll second not self hosting email unless you're in it for the experience.

I'd also strongly caution against hosting email for friends and family unless you want to own that relationship for the rest of your life.

If you do it anyway, you're going to end up locked into whatever solution you decide for a long time, because now you have users who rely on that solution.

If you still go forward, don't use Google (or msft). Use a dedicated email service. Having your personal domain tied to those services just further complicates the lock in.

(I did this over a decade ago, with Google, when it was just free vanity domain hosting. I've been trying for years to get my users migrated to Gmail accounts.)

If I had it all to do over again. I'd probably setup accounts as vanity forwards to a "real" account for people who wanted them. That's easy to maintain, move around, and you're not dealing with migrating peoples oauth to everything when you want to move or stop paying for it.

lemmyvore ,

I have a bunch of users (friends and family) on a bunch of different domains. It's honestly not so bad but yeah, you need a decent dedicated service.

Migrations aren't simple but aren't that complicated either (just did one last year).

I mainly need to copy their email over but it's also a good moment to check they're using decent passwords and to have them freshen it.

I also need to update their webmail and IMAP/SMTP URLs in their bookmark/email apps but I've been playing with DNS CNAMEs for this purpose and it's mostly working ok (aliasing one of my domains to the provider's so I only have to update the DNS which I do anyway for a mail migration).

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

My mistake was using Google but when it was just the ability to have a personal domain as your google account. But they kept expanding and morphing that into what is now Google Workspace. Migrating people off of that requires them to abandon their Google accounts and start over. If it was just email it would be a much simpler prospect to change backends.

lemmyvore ,

Can you not transfer away a domain from Google as you would from any other registrar? And then set the MX records to point at another mail service?

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

Certainly. But, what I'm trying to say is it's not just email. My users are using my domain as their Google account. All Google services, oAuth, etc..., not just email. To do it right I need to get them to migrate their google services to a gmail.com account.

kuadhual ,
@kuadhual@lemm.ee avatar

I'm an admin of a self hosted iRedMail (with iRedAdmin Pro).

My advice is: Don't.

Getting an email server running is easy. Managing them is not.

There are some good advice here. Use commercial service with personal domain.

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