this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Simple mail server (self.selfhosted)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Humorless4483 to c/selfhosted
 

Hello,

I want to deploy a simple mail server so that it can be used for users to register themselves or reset passwords, etc.

Is there an easy one to deploy (in docker if possible) ?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I I agree with everybody else saying that the email server should not be self-hosted. But I have a specific exception to this rule, which I was keen to try, but I never did this or take this with a pinch of salt.

I do self-host on my services, but at the moment I keep myself hosted email on a public server, not on my home server.

Since I am using a tunnel to access my services from outside, my home server is actually using my public server ip. moving my email self-hosting to my home server would not actually change the front facing IP address of that email server, and no harm would be done to my mail server.

But is it really worth it? Probably not. Since I would still need some kind of backup email server out on the internet for the rare situations where my home server is cut from the internet due to power outage or ISP being down.

You want full reliability for your email server. So your home connection without UPS or backup connection isn't going to cut the cheese fully.

So, I would suggest you don't self-host your email on your home server. You can still self-host your email, but on a public server. Be aware, though, that is a difficult task which will require lots of effort and many months to get it done right and accepted everywhere.

[–] pHr34kY 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I host my own mail. When it's down, the mail just gets delivered after I get online again. Almost all mail servers are configured to retry over a period of several days before giving up.

Once my health insurer sent me mail by post to tell me that my mail server was down. That was kinda funny.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What if your home network goes down while you are away for a week and you cannot get it back online?

Not a risk I am willing to take, so a backup server would be required.

[–] pHr34kY 1 points 6 months ago

The longest outage I've had in a decade is when my primary SSD died a 2 months ago and I had to reinstall using config backups. It was down for around a day.

I've thrown a UPS on it and flown overseas for a week or two. It's basically just email for me and the kids.

I've had longer outages on hosted services, TBH.