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”!
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.
What is your ‘deleted files’ policy? How long do you keep them? I had a similar issue but then found out that the nextcloud cron-process wasn’t running so files in the ‘deleted files’ folder where never really deleted.
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
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.
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).
I’d throw in mailbox.org as a more privacy-focused alternative to Google and Microsoft. Been using them for years without issues. Only their 2FA solution sucks.
If you get your domain from OVH, you get one single mailbox (be it with a lot of aliases, like a different email-address for every service/website you use) for free.
I did as well, but then I went Microsoft and never looked back. Google’s platform still feels like a shitty startup with missing stuff everywhere, compared to Azure (or AWS).
The only thing I’m missing is Google Photos, but there are self-hosted alternatives out, that I’ll try soon.
All good advice. I’d recommended protonmail for mail hosting - got very good experience with them and the onky downside is you have to use their client.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’d avoid Google, they don’t have a stable offering
What you you mean by not stable?
I’ve been (stuck with) Google Workspace for many, many years - I was grandfathered out from the old G-Suite plans. The biggest issue for me is that all my Play store purchases for my Android are tied to my Workspace’s identity, and there’s no way to unhook that if I move.
I want to move. I have serious trust issues with Google. But I can’t stop paying for Workspaces, as it means I’d lose all my Android purchases. It’s Hotel fucking California.
But I’ve always found the email to be stable, reliable, and the spam filtering is top notch (after they acquired and rolled Postini into the service).
I mean, they kill services willy nilly. Sure Gmail will probably survive, but the rest drove me away (Reader, Music, …).
Regarding your Android purchases: At the time of my move I went through my list of apps I bought and tallied the ones up, that I still used. It was less than $50 of repurchases.
Don’t let those old purchases hold you back. Cut this old baggage loose.
At the time of my move I went through my list of apps I bought and tallied the ones up, that I still used. It was less than $50 of repurchases.
Yeah, I know this what I should do too. As someone else said in this comment thread, gotta tear that bandaid off at some point. Just shits me that I should have to. But the freedom after doing it… <chef’s kiss>
“But I shouldn’t have to” is a trap, everywhere it occurs. It cripples one’s ability to act on an emotional level, and manifests as all kinds of resistances and avoidances that ultimately prevent you from seeing the problem clearly - and if you somehow do see the problem clearly, you still don’t want to do anything about it.
The world owes you nothing. You exist. If you want love and fairness and a reasonable world, love and be fair and be reasonable, and choose to work together with those who are. Where you work, what you spend your time on, where you spend your money, and who you spend your time with are your places of impact. Don’t let others steal that - particularly over ‘but I shouldn’t have to defend myself.’
I tore that bandwidth off a while ago. Same thing with trust issues and google.
Since then I set up a family account and use a regular Gmail account for app store purchases so I can change provider at any time. Can share most of my app purchases with family. I don’t actually check the gmail email. Just use it for Android services.
Yeah, that’s the other thing that shits me. Paying for my wife and I on Workspaces, and we don’t have family sharing rights. We’re literally paying to be treated like second-class citizens!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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…
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.
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