Is it useful to have your own mail server as a non-business? Just a private person. Configure SMTP and IMAP for it, sync with outlook I think.
Yay or nay, waste of time? What are your thoughts?
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No.
I would say absolutely not.
If you work in IT or similar these concepts may become important, and that makes the effort worth it to me. Otherwise, I agree with the other commenters.
Here’s an entertaining lecture that summarizes how terrible modern email is.
My first IT job was as mail admin.
I wouldn’t wish that shit on anybody.
I remember that job and also building the server myself from scratch. Qmail, Squirrelmail, Dovecot and all that. It lasted about a year until we bought something as it was hell. Now days with IP reputation and spam filters - even if the server ran, you’d never get anything delivered outbound.
OP, the most I would do is an SMTP server that relays through Gmail for delivering alerts from monitoring systems. Anything else is pain.
I 2nd the 2nd paragraph
I finally built my own mail server because if something broke my alerts would sometimes hit the maximum limit for a non-business gmail account and not get delivered.
I learned a lot, but it is a pain in this day and age. I had to set up SPF and DMARC records to get it to deliver to gmail. I guess the next adventure is DKIM.
Assuming you’re using postfix as an MTA, it’s not too hard to get OpenDKIM up and running.
My mail admin experience is pretty dated these days, but I followed this guide back in the day and had it working.
Unfortunately I’m using Citadel, which doesn’t have a lot of awesome documentation.
Guess I get to learn some more.
That’s all we do for clients that need on-prem equipment to scan that don’t support integration with Gmail/outlook online. Spin up an SMTP relay for things like scanners, alerts, Databases, etc. and just run that straight into Google/Microsoft Mail servers.
Our latest migration was with MailEnable and going to Exchange online, which was a collosal mess.
Mailcow.email
Mailinabox
Same, became quite skilled on exchange server, bad career path…
same, hire a service, to deal with spam and spam list is hard.
i use proxmox mail gateway, i host both the gateway and mail server as vms on the same machine
You can easily host for receiving mail, but don’t bother for sending. Most email services will simply mark your email as spam.
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.
Nope. Spam mail
I have the Proxmox mail filter in front of my Exchange. It works wonderfully well. No spam gets through.
Absolutely not. It’s notoriously hard.
There was an XKCD about this years ago. Basically, the answer was ‘no.’
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 once set one up on a raspberry pi. It was compromised in about 5 minutes.
“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’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.
If you’re planning to run for political office, I’d recommend against it. /s