this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
99 points (96.3% liked)

Selfhosted

39980 readers
477 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I have a unique name, think John Doe, and I'm hoping to create a unique and "professional" looking email account like [email protected] or [email protected]. 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 [email protected] [email protected] 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!!

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Domain+Zoho Mail Lite subscription (less than 1€/month, ATM).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Self-hosting email is not at all easy, and I'd recommend paying for hosted email from a service that lets you use a custom domain. Most will let you have multiple inboxes, although this may cost extra.

Then, just buy a domain (NameCheap is fine) and point your MX records at the email provider.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Cloudflare sells domains at cost. If you use apple devices and pay for iCloud+ ($1.99 a month for the cheapest plan), you can get email hosting for your domain for the entire family + a catch all address.

You can run an email host yourself but it is going to cost more in time and effort to maintain than just paying for hosting. It’s not very professional if your messages go to spam due to low reputation or if you miss a message/someone gets a bounce back because the container running your mail server was down and you didn’t realize

Run mail on a custom domain for fun, to learn what it takes, but don’t do it for mail that really matters

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I use both. I have a self hosted docker compose instance of mailcow, which alerts me when an update is available.

I also use protonmail as well.

Self hosting was a pain in the ass to get working, but I've had no issues with it once up. I tossed it behind a reverse proxy to keep it from directly touching the internet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Based on my personal experience, id say gmail, you only need a domain I used namecheap without any issue. You register with that on google, some settings you set on namecheap , it guides you all the way then you pay the lowest monthly fee, I pay 5.20 euros per month for my company's mail.

You set up a main email then you can setup any number of aliases for yourself I think, you can also create group emails and assign yourself to it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If you ever decide to host your own, via VPS or sth consider checking docker-mailserver and watchtower. First takes care of the mail stuff and the second updates your containers frequently so you will not have to manually update to new versions of the container (for security patches etc.).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

My father still has a gmail account for all of our last names.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Friends don't let friends self host email.

Easy enough to make it work, but maintaining 100% uptime and 100% deliverability is very difficult.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›