I’m contemplating taking control of my email by moving away from mainstream providers like Gmail or Outlook. What self-hosted email services have you tried, and which ones do you find most reliable and user-friendly? Are there any challenges or advantages you’ve encountered in making the switch?
Trust me you do not want to point an MX record at your houses IP. It’s a terrible idea, dont do it, I don’t have the energy to qualify that statement but just trust me, don’t.
I’m sorry but a statement like this make me not trust you at all. Take an strangers word for something with no evidence…. This is how a mob of ignorant people do stupid things.
Proton mail
https://mailbox.org/ and https://tuta.com/ are pretty neat providers.
After hosting my own email in the 1990s-2010s, I’ve been cured of that and rather give some dedicated vendor a few bucks a year to take care of all the headaches for me.
I wouldnt selfhost my e-mail. You will quickly be blacklisted since your server wont have a good reputation and will have issues sending out emails to peers.
Rackspace gets blacklisted exactly twice a year, like clockwork. So how’s it any worse?
I love these pessimistic, ignorant takes because at the end of the day I get more money running (setting and basically forgetting) email servers for paranoid people.
Send your marketing emails from somewhere else and you’ll never have issues
Modoboa + Thunderbird
Mail in a box or poste.io
3rd for MIAB. I use Linode. I believe most ISP’s restrict access to mail ports so running at home is probably not possible.
This is a generalization that not useful to keep repeating. Better advice would be check to be sure YOUR ISP allows access to the ports you need.
Second vote for MAIB.
Being this is self hosted, I have heard great things about redmail once you get it configured. Soon, to give it a shot. Made it past my 15GB on Google and would rather pay for a droplet.
MXroute
this is the way if you have a little patience and aren’t afraid to learn.
I got a 10 year credit due to a server outage that I didn’t even notice. Dude takes his service seriously.
Fastmail, all the way
I bought into Fastmail about 10 years ago (for 7 years) & recently moved to Proton about 5 years ago. Both are excellent privacy-first providers. Gmail is my junk e-mail at this point. Good recommendation. Australia-based business. Fastmail & Proton are my votes. I tried self-hosting for a few years & would agree with below – too many issues with blacklists. This is one you should consider paying for.
I’m getting tired of not having IMAP/SMTP access with Protonmail. How would you recommend Fastmail? Anything negative?
Exchange
Wouldn’t the cost be prohibitive for selfhosting?
No 🏴☠️, we talk selfhosted, not business.
Alternatively if you use SOGo for groupware/webmail it serves Exchange ActiveSync. No windows server needed!
Not 100% though because CalDAV.
This is a joke, isn’t it?
Why?
I found a lot of good info in r/degoogle and r/privacy
Ended up with MailFence
To “take control of your email” I recommend buying your own domain, but not self-hosting.
Having your own domain will allow you to migrate from one email provider to the other, as you stop being locked in to them with their domain.
If you do not want to use Google or Microsoft, I recommend mailbox.org (used this one for a long time, but had to change, because I wanted to send emails from my aliases). Tutanota is also good choice.
Protonmail is also there as one of the more popular alternatives to Microsoft and Google, but I find them too expensive.
Why am I not recommending self-hosting email on self-hosting reddit? Unlike other services, which you can host at your home (which simplifies a lot of stuff and allow you to avoid subscription), you pretty much need VPS for selfhosting email. If your needs are simple, both mailbox.org and tutanota will cover your email needs for 3 euro per month. You don’t have to think about security, spam, email delivery, building trust with other email providers. It’s their responsibility, not yours. Good luck doing it cheaper on VPS.
I personally use M365 business basic, it’s very reliable but exchange online might not be user friendly. However price to value ratio is just unbeatable.
5 usd a year vpc… and host your own domain and mailserver
If you self host you are at the behest of your domain registrar.
Purelymail.com -- based on a similar thread here 6 months ago. They are very affordable, and I have 5 different domains hosted with them. They only bill based on traffic and storage. I liked being able to have multiple domains without any additional charges.