Homelab

No.

I would say absolutely not.

If you have a home lab you've probably got devices that sent e-mail alerts so you could try running something internally to see how you get on.

I think some older devices don't have authentication and can only work internally.

For yourself as an experiment sure, but don't fuck around with your family's email.

I used a guide to setup an email server on couple of vps, and I have been running this for 7-8 years now. Adding additional features and security implementations. My servers are scoring max scores on all test I could find. Allowing me to have freedom to do with emails and domains as I wish to. And it just works. I would not change my setup for anything right now as I would see it as a downgrade.

You need to understand a lot of things but it is doable and once all is setup it just works, as long as you follow up on things like domain and certificate renewals.

I am even considering moving my mail server to my homelab… just for fun, as I still would have a backup smtp on vps.

After trials and errors, I find it good to work on as a hobby project / just for fun, but not for your day to day emails. In my case, my SMTP server literally only runs for my printer that has a scan-to-email feature on it, wouldn’t trust it for anymore than that

Is there a docker container mail gateway I just need to send mail from monitoring app

Always fun to do if learning but in production even for personal i would recommend you pay for something like startmail or mailfence and use their custom domain features.

i learned exchange on my own and even had dreams of doing multi tenant exchange until exchange online came and jerked off all over that dream

I've run my own mail server for over 15 years. If you're going to do it, put it on a VM at a reliable cloud provider, such as AWS. You wouldn't want your email to go down while you're on vacation for a week with no way of fixing it. You need to make sure you use a static IP that you keep forever, because your mail server builds reputation and the IP must not have any reputation of spam that has landed it on block lists.

It's not difficult if you let reuse someone else's hard work to make it secure and keep it updated. This project is fantastic: https://mailinabox.email/

Would I recommend it? It's more rational to bring your own domain to have it hosted by Microsoft or Google, but doing it yourself is more fun and flexible, and possibly cheaper depending on how many users and domains you will be hosting.

If you're planning to run for political office, I'd recommend against it. /s

How many of you all here, using a hosted solution remembered to setup DKIM on their custom domain? hostname alignment can aid in email deliverability, i believe.

For reference, if you were using office365 you would take the steps outlined here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-authentication-dkim-configure?view=o365-worldwide

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Lastly... if you don't bother, any good reason to skip the domain alignment step?

Go for it for fun, but understand that FEW EMAILS WILL GET DELIVERED.

It’s nearly impossible to develop a good IP reputation, and Microsoft and other mega-email-providers will deliver all your mail to junk.

This talk will probably be helpful in convincing you why it's not worth it

https://youtu.be/mrGfahzt-4Q?si=24HCKydAqngWogB1

The only issue hosting your own non-bisiness mail server is that a lot of internet providers block incoming port 25, so you may not be able to recieve incoming mail. Getting a reverse DNS setup may be an issue as well which will bring your mail score down.... But you can increase the score with SPF and DKIM implementation.

Just make sure that you secure your server from unauthorized relay or you'll be blacklisted in no time.

I have my own mail server for using some of the service that requires mailing to my own domain.

It needs a static ip for best, which I have. But I’m currently lacking Ptr( if I named right, just a dns thing to do reverse checking) due to I’m not using business line and my isp doesn’t provide the service for home users.

Having one is great, but don’t use it as your main email service.

In 2023 the threats to mail servers are so plentiful and ever changing, it’s the thing every business should give up — let the army of security pros at Microsoft and Google worry about those, honestly. Use the economies of scale of what they do protects millions of mailboxes, instead of you having to do all that same effort of work to protect 5 mailboxes.

It’s an interesting exercise to learn about how everything interacts and works. Beyond that I would absolutely not bother. It’s high effort, it’s shit to maintain and secure. It’s shit to debug when mails don’t arrive.

Use AWS SES.

I'm using gmail with my own domain and I still get my email filtered out. You would need to warm your IP address for years to not get into spam folders in most places. Not to mention the uptime issue. I would not recommend. You may try fastmail or some similar service instead.

It’s fun to setup for learning and then to throw away. Don’t do it for day to day use because:

1. It’s an absolute PITA to keep healthy, and;
2. You gonna get hacked

I have an O365 instance hosting my own domain for mail

I run three of them now, one since about 2005 and haven't had any blocking issues on it. I have also always set up DNS records as well as had a static IP.

I'm running my own over 20 years now. For my own domains and catch all and temporary email address. For very long time temp email was not available commercialy. Now we have simple login, I think Firefox has something similar and few others. I would say it pretty self sufficient, no need to tinker when all is set up. I have always been exim user and I only know exim. The only pain I have now is that let's encrypt certificate gets renewed every 3 months and exim is unable to read it, so I need to fix permissions. The bonus point and weired flex is the ability to read email via telnet to port 110 and sending email chatting to the server on port 25 lol

Microsoft 365 paid is so cheap, it isn’t funny. I’d do that.

The biggest problem you'll run into is sending email from your residential internet connection. Most, if not all, residential ISPs either 100% block or severely throttle port 25 outbound traffic to cut down on spam. Even if you're able to find an ISP that doesn't block 25 outbound, if the reverse zone lookup indicates that it's a residential ISP most spam filtering solutions are going to flag all of your messages as spam.

I've hosted my own email for 2 years now. Using proxmox mail gateway on a 5€ hetzner VPS. it relays mail to my mail server which I host at home. I've dealt with my home public IP changing every now and then with 2 simple scripts. SPF, DKIM, DMARC is all set up.

All in all, it's relatively low maintenance. PMG makes a good job filtering all the crap and I have yet to receive and actual spam in my inbox (I only had a couple false positives).

I documented the whole setup, can share if you want.

Nah, I can't think of hardly any reasons why I'd want to, so many things to consider. Just not worth my time

My first IT job was as mail admin.

I wouldn't wish that shit on anybody.

As other said. If you want to see if you can. Yes fun go for it.

Don’t use it for anything important. And know that your ISP will very likely have that port blocked already. And if you call them to ask them to unblock it they are unlikely to be willing to.

This is to prevent scammers and spammers.

Also. Know that even if you were able to. Getting other mail servers to not instantly junk your mail is actually quite difficult or impossible. So your emails would always land in spam, be outright blocked, or be in junk.

As a fun project, yes.

As an actual day2day email, no.

Unless u have actual redundancy with 24/7 uptime and static IP, it may caused missed emails. Even if u do, the price is a factor u may need to consider.

I have an Exchange vm setup the last 3-4 years now. I use smtp2go for outgoing email. Works really well. I primarily use the system for alerts emails and mailing lists I use. If it breaks its an annoyance but nothing critical. I have a mail filter in front that all incoming mail goes through.

"is it recommended" implies that the wisdom of crowds (a) exists, b) applies, c) is correct.

What do YOU want to do? That's all that matters.

I've run my own mail server for over 20 years. I enjoy it, and its nice having my mail sit in my basement.

I selfhost everything I want except for email, just not worth it imo.

have been running my own mail server(s) since early 2000. If Hillary can, you can :)

but of course there are downsides as well, you need to expose services from the outside, you need to allow SNMP inbound, you need to deal with DNS and various mail security enhancements, deal with anti-spam and do mailware/virus scanning etc. on top of that you would need to consider some kind of "high" availability. if your server goes down = no emails..

for me its worth it, my exchange server have been running for the last 10 years or so, I publish both webmail and use the outlook and/or mail in my phone.

I have multiple domain (10+) and run my own DNS.

The only thing I can't do is send emails.... I have to rely on my ISP for outgoing emails, but that's a good thing as generally my emails are not marked as spam as they comes from a trusted source.

setting up email is easy, configuring it so you don't get caught in spam filters, and you don't get a ton is a full time job. I did it for awhile and just didn't find it worthwhile any longer.

Everyone should at least give it a try, if only so your decision not to is well informed instead of following cargo cult advice.

Nope. Spam mail