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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 10 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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've had providers acquired from under me several times over the last couple decades. They usually get worse after that; new owners typically want to squeeze the customers not to improve quality. That's why I won't use (anymore) any email service that's not easy to migrate away from.

To achieve a reasonable level of email independence you need IMAP access, you need to use your own domain, and you need to keep your DNS service separate from the email provider.