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!!

bjoern_tantau,
@bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de avatar

As far as I know Gmail and others also offer using your own Domain with them. Maybe that’s easier for you.

syd,
@syd@lemy.lol avatar

Yes you need a domain for sure. But you don’t need a server for it, in fact I don’t recommend trying to self-host mail server.

You can use Tuta, Proton Mail, Gmail or iCloud Mail services. You just need to add some DNS records to the domain to redirect mail provider.

SupraMario,

Cloudflare + protonmail is my setup. Works great and if you buy like 2 years it’s pretty cheap.

syd,
@syd@lemy.lol avatar

Yeah I’m also using Proton but I will switch to Tuta because it has more features I think.

MeatsOfRage,

I’ve done this in the past using Gmail. You pick a domain provider and get their email plan. Most offer both services. I’ve used name cheap.

Then in your regular Gmail account you can configure the IMAP settings from the domain registrar to receive the email from that inbox. Then in Gmail find the settings where you can send as another address. This lets you use that new address in our outbound mail. From there I just auto label the incoming mail to help sort the two addresses.

Now you should have your regular Gmail and your new novelty email all in one place.

lemmyvore,

Wait, does this mean you’re giving Gmail the password for the other mailbox?

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”!

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.

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.

Engywuck,

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

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.

ChrislyBear,

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).

DeltaTangoLima,
@DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com avatar

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).

SeeJayEmm, (edited )
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

@avguser

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.

lemmyvore,

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).

SeeJayEmm,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

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.

grepe,

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.

lily33,

That said, you can use a third party service only for sending, but receive mail on your self-hosted server.

Fisch,
@Fisch@lemmy.ml avatar

That’s what I’m doing. I have selfhosted E-Mail with YunoHost and send it through SMTP2Go.

SeeJayEmm,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

I’ve been successfully using SES for a couple years now without issue.

domi,
@domi@lemmy.secnd.me avatar

Do you have more details on your setup?

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.

SeeJayEmm,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

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.

Finally you’ll need to configure your MTA to relay through SES. If you use postfix here’s a quick guide: medium.com/…/sending-emails-with-postfix-and-amaz…

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.

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,
@PropaGandalf@lemmy.world avatar

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

Dehydrated,

Source?

PropaGandalf,
@PropaGandalf@lemmy.world avatar

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,
@PropaGandalf@lemmy.world avatar

Well then keep doing what you are doing.

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.

hddsx,

As someone who is once again trying to setup an email server, it’s more work than it’s worth for like 99% of people

ikidd,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

Give me a ping if you need a hand, I’ve done it for decades.

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

bdonvr, (edited )

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.

https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/5b7bd21e-1301-4186-9a9f-8821108ea519.png

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.

lemmyvore, (edited )

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.

7Sea_Sailor,

Lots of people have said worthwhile things. Don’t selfhost email for example. While going with an email hoster has been recommended a couple times, which is good and easy, I want to offer an alternative: SimpleLogin (or comparable providers). Essentially a “email alias generator”, it forwards received emails to one or more mail addresses (Google, Hotmail, what have you). It also allows you to connect a domain and then create new inboxes on the fly by simply sending (or telling a service to send) an email to that non-existing inbox. Which is incredibly handy if you’re faced with a situation that demands an email, where you don’t want to give out an actual email.

So say you have the domain doe.com, and you’re in a physical shop at the register, faced with the question if you want to get 10% off by registering for their members club. You can simply give the cashier the email “coupon_walmart@doe.com” (which does not yet exist), the email will be sent, received bei SL, the inbox created and the coupon code forwarded to your Gmail account. Afterwards, you can disable or delete the inbox and never have to worry about newsletters or data breaches. Nifty!

Every one of these boxes also has its own “sent from” address visible in your actual mail account. Which means that you can simply respond to incoming emails, and the recipient will see the mail address they sent a message to. This also means that you can set up filters in your mail account to move messages from certain sender addresses into specific labels, as if they were real separate email accounts.

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