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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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Self-hosted or personal email solutions? (self.selfhosted)

submitted 6 months ago by avguser to c/selfhosted

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I have a unique name, think John Doe, and I'm hoping to create a unique and "professional" looking email account like [email protected] or [email protected]. 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 [email protected] [email protected] 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!!

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[–] MeatsOfRage 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

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.

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

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

[–] MeatsOfRage 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's how IMAP works for any mail client

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Well yes but normally the email client lives on my phone or PC so nobody else knows my email logins.