this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2024
33 points (94.6% liked)

Selfhosted

40329 readers
638 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

So, as the topic says, I'm going to set up a self hosted email service for myself, family and friends. I know that this one is a controversial topic around here, but trust me when I say I know what I'm getting into. I've had a small hosting business for years and I've had my share of issues with microsoft and others, I know how to set things up and keep them running and so on.

However, on the business side we used both commercial solution and a dirt-cheap service with just IMAPS/SMTPS and webmail with roundcube. Commercial one (Kerio Connect, neat piece of software, check it out if you need one) is something I don't want to pay for anymore (even if their pricing is pretty decent, it's still money out from my pocket).

I know for sure I can rely to bog-standard postfix+dovecot+spamassassin -combo, and it will work just fine for plain email. However, I'd really like to have calendar and contacts in the mix as well and as I've only worked with commercial solution for the last few years I'm not up to speed on what the newest toys can offer.

I'm not that strict on anything, but the thing needs to run on linux and it must have the most basic standards supported, like messages stored on maildir-format (simplifies migration to other platform if things change), support for sieve (or other commonly supported protocol) and contacts/calendar need to work with pretty much anything (android, ios, linux, windows, mac...) without extra software on client end (*DAV excluded, those are fine in my books). And obviously the thing needs to work with imaps, smtps, dkim and other necessities, but that should be implied anyways.

I know that things like zimbra, sogo and iredmail exist, but as mentioned, it's been a while since I've played with things like that, so what are your recommendations for setup like this today?

top 13 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] witten@lemmy.world 1 points 23 minutes ago

You can do calendar and contacts separate from email. Try Radicale. I've been using it for years.

[–] neo@lemmy.hacktheplanet.be 9 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Great plan! We need more independently hosted email. I’ve been self hosting email for 20 years. Still running Postfix and Dovecot, but don’t have all the features you’d like though. I just wanted to chime in that I’ve moved from spamassassin to rspamd. And I’m happy about that. Given your experience in the hosting business I think you’ll like rspamd. One thing I have changed since a few months is have outgoing mail go through Amazon SES. I moved hosting from Linode to Hetzner and that turned out to be not so great for outbound delivery reputation. I didn’t want to migrate back to Linode so I bit the bullet and compromised with SES. That has been really working well, but I admit it is a bit of a step back from fully self hosting.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

What's the benefit of rspamd over SA? I've used SA since I first setup my mail stack years ago, and it's been great. Cron jobs run nightly to train based on the contents of all the mailboxes' .spam folders, so it's only gotten better with time.

Not judging, just curious.

[–] sk@hub.utsukta.org 8 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

I've been using mailcow for about a year and i am very satisfied, it checks all your boxes and is easy to configure and deploy over docker.

[–] witten@lemmy.world 1 points 25 minutes ago

Another container-based alternative in that space is Mailu.

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Just beat me to it...

The one thing that they don't have yet last I updated, though they've been working on it for a while, is a prod ready LDAP/SSO connection. I had the dev branch working with Keycloak, but never got plain LDAP to function.

[–] sk@hub.utsukta.org 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

@ShellMonkey I use the Generic OIDC option, havent tried LDAP.

[–] ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com 1 points 3 hours ago

I tend to keep things simple so if I can it's easier to not set up the separate auth middleware when there's already an AD comparable system in place.

Another option I've used before is called Neth Server, but that's more one of those SOHO all-in-one systems rather than a dedicated mail box.

https://community.nethserver.org/

[–] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago
[–] CaptSpify@lemmy.today 2 points 3 hours ago

I have Dovecot and Postfix running on Debian on a server in my closet. Works great for my needs

[–] swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

I've stuck with iredmail for years. Spin up a VM, grab the installer, and see how it performs for you.

[–] darklamer@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago

It doesn't answer your questions about calendar and contacts, but you might still find it interesting to take a look at this project:

https://maddy.email/

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 1 points 4 hours ago

@IsoKiero I don't know about "latest and greatest", but your bog-standard solution seems about right; just add radicale into the mix, and you've got calendaring and contacts.