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!!

Anon383,

I do this. Personally I use cloudflaire for my domain and dns, not that I’m committed to them it’s just what I use. I then use protonmail for my email and point the relivent records to them.

kuadhual,

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.

Deebster,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

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.

kameecoding, (edited )

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

TORFdot0,

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

hayalci,

I have been using porkbun.com as a domain registrar.

For email hosting, self-hosting is a lot of effort. If you just want the damned thing to work. I’ve heard good things about Fastmail, and personally I’m using migadu.com. it’s $19/year for micro.

Use any imap client, or if you want to keep using what you’re using Gmail and Outlook and Apple mail apps w all support your new personal account over imap as well

subtext,

I use Fastmail.

My domain has me plus the wife, and she’s not willing to tolerate any amount of fiddling or bugs or anything, so we needed something that would Just Work™, and Fastmail fits the bill quite well.

Their features are great, I actually prefer their app over the native iOS app, and they’ve been rock solid since I signed up. I can also have any amount of aliased and I can put all three of my domains on there. Plus they’re not Google which was the biggest thing I needed them to be.

Engywuck,

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

ConstantPain,

I use Google Domains to create custom email addresses on the fly that syphons to my personal Gmail address.

If I subscribe to a service, say Netflix, I just put netflix@mydomain.com and it automagically exists and redirects to my Gmail.

savedbythezsh,

You mean Squarespace? support.google.com/domains/answer/13689670

possiblylinux127,

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

IHateFacelessPorn, (edited )

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.).

LucidDaemon,

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.

fine_sandy_bottom,

Friends don’t let friends self host email.

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

Dehydrated,

Get a domain from Njalla, set it up with Proton Mail. That’s the best solution in my opinion. I don’t think there’s anything better for privacy.

PropaGandalf,

Njalla had some big controversy regarding their reliability and trustworthiness. I’d stay away from their services.

Dehydrated,

Source?

PropaGandalf,

www.trustpilot.com/review/njal.la basically a bunch of people complain that thy cant access their domain names. This is possible because njalla owns the domain for you

We’re not actually a domain name registration service, we’re a customer to these. We sit in between the domain name registration service and you, acting as a privacy shield. When you purchase a domain name through Njalla, we own it for you. However, the agreement between us grants you full usage rights to the domain. Whenever you want to, you can transfer the ownership to yourself or some other party.

I don’t want to stop anyone from using it just keep this in mind.

Dehydrated,

I’m aware how Njalla works, actually that’s the reason I use them. I don’t want my name, my payment information or anything connected to my domain. With Njalla, I don’t have to give up any data and I can pay anonymously with crypto. I’ve used it for all my domains for years and I never had any issues. They seem very trustworthy to me.

PropaGandalf,

Well then keep doing what you are doing.

Sagar,

Self Dost is the perfect solution for you!

halm,
@halm@leminal.space avatar

“Self” … “Dost”?

Idk, that looks strikingly like a no-brand Freedom box, except there are no specs to judge by. Just some super iffy, nondescript sales pitch. “That’s it, yes indeed”!

NESSI3, (edited )

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