Host your own Mail Server, is it a good idea?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 พ.ค. 2024
- Host your own Mail Server, is it a good idea? I recently stopped running my self-hosted mail solution with mailcow and switched to a SaaS product (Microsoft 365). Let's try to find out when it makes sense to run a self-hosted Mail Server and in which cases you probably should not do it. #MailServer #Microsoft365 #Linux
How to set up a mail server on Linux in 10 Minutes: • Install a mail server ...
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:02 - Mail Servers are complex
02:09 - Responsibilities
04:18 - Control and Privacy
05:59 - Learning
07:08 - General Advice
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The reason why people want to run their own server is to detach themselves from Large corporations like Google and Microsoft.
all your emails go through their servers. and the data dwells on their servers.
...where they can harvest it (and they do).
No, it's not just about "getting away from BIG TECH", it's also about the cost/benefit ratio. Nowadays, e.g Google Apps costs about 5 bugs/mail/month account; running your own web and mail server costs almost the same. And I don't have to deal with GPDR issues and security concerns that I can't solve myself.
The most underestimated point about mail hosting - to understand the concept of "mail". and what is connected behind. Like in the video already said - an understanding about about DNS, MTA, MDA, Protocols, Security and Server configs are really necessary to run a self-hosted Mail-server in a critical business, also an understanding of Backup/Restore. Even as homelab mail server - it can be really backfiring when the mail server is configured in wrong way and works as open SMTP-relay server and your provider doesn't allow it. Agreeing the with point of learning experience, but without basic and advanced knowledge of mail, those experiences can be frustrating.
Whatever you do, keep in mind, Mail is not easy as it seems at first and also takes big responsibility.
Absolutely 💯 agreed
Can't be totally agree on the mentioned SaaS product or any other commercial services as an alternative to a self-hosted email server. Especially if considering privacy as the main concern. I get it that those commercial services offer way better security but at the same time where actual data resides is in their infrastructure.
I don't see much value in storing mails in your own infrastructure. Mails are always leaving your server, they're always stored somewhere else, what's then out of your control in every case. The only way to really ensure private mail communication is end to end encryption, you can realize with both self-hosted or cloud providers. So in the end it really doesn't matter, in my opinion.
@@christianlempa not really.. all email sent to coworkers stay on premises so I kinda agree with OP
@wakkowarner9522 they'd have to supena one of you. I agree I don't like it on external server
Beware of that advice and never trust any encryption from those big corporation, we know they have access to actual private keys as shown with the guy arrested because of photos uploaded on iCloud and a few other examples
Is there a way to configure the eMail server to recall or make self-destructing email? Are there other free personal email servers that can do this?
Agree :)
But I have another question:
What kind of software is running at 4:20?
I would suggest using a VPS that allows out going mail. As some don't allow that. I find that to be a decent service as you don't have to worry about the hardware and just the basic security of it.
You could also use a relay so you won’t have to worry about your ip getting blacklisted. Secondly you won’t have to warmup the ip.
Yea, I leaned a tonne when building and maintaining an email server a long time ago.
The only reason I'd have one now is to use with a discardable domain. i.e. use the domain to register on sites that force an email.
That way I can spin up the Server, get the email and close it down after.
Any spam that might follow will go back to the sender as undelivered, but if I need to reset a password then I can always spin it back up to collect the email I need
I am interested in self-hosting my email server precisely BECAUSE my provider has switched to Microsoft 365. I hate it. It does not play well with my email client, the spam filter is too primitive and it does not support a catch-all address, or if it does, the tech support I talked to had no clue about it.
If you want to learn to run a mail server, you can always set up something with a less important domain. That way you still learn everything but are not immediately in stress when something fails.
If you have a mail server service (or control panel), you should also be able to let that catch your mail if your own server goes down.
Security (knowledge) wise, I would be careful with running my own mail server. As you say, it costs a lot of time. Especially when you have others (family members, customers) that use that server as well.
This really helped me decide that I should run my own mail server… but probably not use it for anything important.
Thanks mate! Great idea :)
Microsoft does not use the latest encryption. In the past, the Excange server did not shine with security either! You should also consider that large providers also like to look for advertising opportunities in the emails, especially if the provider is free.
Also, no email provider has done anything to earn my trust. So why should I trust a third-party email provider with my mail? Many companies have their own mail server because they don't trust third party providers either!
In the european union, a law is being discussed called chat control. If it is passed, email providers will be obliged to search emails.
Yes, the learning effect is great and setting it up took me 2 days, which were also fun. The result is an email server that supports the latest standards. Anyone who wants to access my emails has to get past me. no secret monitoring in the background.
I also like to look at the logs, because they are manageable for me and my family and I find it interesting how other providers react to my mail server and what standards others are using.
Which opensource mail server did you end up using? There are so many nowadays just trying to see which one is most up to date and user friendly. Let me know if there is a video you recommend.
@@projectspage5396 Mailcow has turned out to be advantageous.
It is a complete mail system that leaves nothing to be desired, runs very stable and allows easy backups. There is also a large community behind it and helps with questions.
The spam filter can be set extremely detailed, so that even phishing attacks are detected.
Thank you for a great video
Buy a Typewriter: cheap, easy to maintain and you get an answer for sure.
Not sure what you mean
thumbs up, bevor starting to watch the video, because of the good and wished theme 😁👍
so content wasn‘t how I expacted, but it was quite interesting altough. What did you do with your mailcow-mails, when you changed to MS? I use mailcow on a vserver.
I hope it's a good thing to sometimes do what people don't expect 😁. I have migrated my mails with outlook, so just copied it from the one mailbox to the other.
I am currently struggling just trying to figure out how to create an email account(the one that came with my hosting plan)without a panel since i have uninstall cyberpanel because it was taking too much space on my basic vps server plan. Is there a way to create this email account only via terminal or would i have to re install cyberpanel to get the GUI for it?
No kidding that was the first video I saw from you and since then you won a subscriber but I am also thinking about switching specially because of server blacklists. It doesn't matter who I host my server with I always have an IP in a blacklist of Microsoft 😅
Oh cool that you're a sub for such a long time :) And yeah I can agree, getting on blacklists is a huge problem with self-hosting!
Thanks. Within the first 3 mins, I realised its not worth it for me. I have just migrated from a hosting company that let me down to Azure VM but my costs are going up so I considered whether my VM could be my email host.
But as a developer, it makes more sense to spend more time building the application not a mail server.
Can you please do an updated video on your latest email set up?? Does the $5 a month include as many domains and email inboxes as you want? Does it include end to end encryption?
Hmm I'll think about it.
I have a simple mail server that other systems email me privately when something goes funky. I used to run it through SaaS but one time it went totally awry and sent about 500 emails, nice crash. So I just want to make it a little more secure, add users. I already disabled relaying.
I have an Iredmail server with several domains and so far I haven't had any problems.
Was that "Eastern Shades by Matt Large" at 7:08??? He's one of my favorites
Yea, great guy making good music ;)
nice information
Thanks!
This is very useful advice. Thank you
You're welcome 😉
Да , это хорошая идея.)
I have been running a MTA for 22 years now. The key here is indeed the learning experience.
Wow that's a long time :D
Sir How do i Setup Mail server on Windows Server 2019, Well i already configured Hmail server on my dedicated server , its working for Local domain only but i want run over Internet , is it possible so ???
Is having a snowball fight with pitching great Randy Johnson,a bad idea?
Can it make sense to create own mail server just for marketing campaigns with specific domain?
As they are not critical and don't have paid limits.
They will go throught if DKIM, etc are well configured?
nice
I just shit myself after discovering Google was gonna start charging for Gmail. Just realized I'm way too dependent on them.
4:19 What's this fancy CLI tool?
:p Just curious...
There are multiple programs running to make it fancy looking.
Tmux is used as terminal multiplexer (with it you can cut your terminal in half and have two terminals)
cmatrix as matrix effect
Two top programs (htop, gtop, whatever, it's task manager for terminals)
Probably some port listeners
There's even apt upgrade running here (so it's using debian/ubuntu based linux distro)
and other crap
looks like tmux
How about spam? How can we get rid of it?
Video läuft eine Sekunde. Und ich denk mir... Mhhh. Wait a minute. Das is doch n Deutscher XD
Tolles Video aber ganz ehrlich. Ich betreibe seit über 5 Jahren meine eigene Mailcow mit Backupkonzept und ich hatte noch nie Probleme und fühl mich mega frei. Niemals mehr ohne Mailcow!
Hoste 2 Mailcows auf zwei verschiedenen vServern bei zwei Providern. Die zweite als redundantes Backup und mach Backups auf ein Storage.
Kann ich nur empfehlen
Danke dir! Mailcow ist super 👍 hab das gerne benutzt
You gonna have a problem running a mail server "in the cloud" anyway. Most of the big networks like Google and Microsoft block entire netblocks in the same way they blocked ISP ranges. And many cloud providers will block essential ports like 25 anyway. I recently created a droplet on Digital Ocean and the IP given had previously been abused and was in the Spamhaus blacklist. Easy to remove, but annoying. I recommend perhaps setting up a mail server if you want to learn being a sysadmin and or Linux. Just don't run it for clients or anything mission critical. Just don't expect most of your wmail to get through! It would be shame to only allow big corporations to get the work now. Yeh lets leave it all to Microsoft and Google as if they haven't already got enough power over us! :)
you talked about Microsoft mail with your own domain. is it something you could do anything about and make a video of how to set it up
Hm, I guess that's not what most people want to see but maybe I'm wrong.
u r a grt guy, tks frm pt-br
Thx ;)
I'm really happy with my selfhosted mailserver
What are you using and how did you setup? And blog, videos?
@@yourlinuxguy I just rented a cheap VPS at Netcup and installed docker-mailserver + added the necessary DNS records. I initially tried sending the emails from my server but on the long run I would recommend using an SMTP relay for outgoing emails.
Klasse gemacht - verdient ein ABO!
The biggest problem with Microsoft is for me, that they only offer GoDaddy as domain provider. I have always used INWX because of their amazing service and prices. So unfortunately it’s not possible to use office 365 as email provider. Do you know any other provider that is offering custom DNS support?
You can use any DNS provider, you just need to select manual setup in 365 and add some DNS records to verify the domain.
why not tutanota?
bro you gave in :(
Really? I don't think so 😋
@@christianlempa You obviously did.
What do you mean by gave in?
Bruh..😊
Probably he was paid by Microsoft to promote 365 instead of a homelab service. UNSUBSCRIBED
Well it worked great for Yahoo
Wouldnt a self hosted be the best option? You can make the server online when its needed and take it offline when not. While the downtime it cannot be hacked, because its offline? Let me hear your opinion about this..
If security is the main concern..
No, taking it offline and assume then it cannot be hacked has nothing to do with security (in my opinion).
Holy. This guy looks exactly like Crypto Punk 6487
🧐
All those mentioned points are true, But what about email marketing. Coz mail server is not only for personal use, but business as well...
being a spammer isnt a business.
@@gzcwnk what are you talking about?
Well, I think all these points would apply to email marketing as well.
What were your running? Interested in spinning up something for learning purposes. Been using Exchange for 10 years or so until we migrated everyone to 365.
I was running mailcow dockerized, as I mentioned in the video description, if you want to take a look :)
DANG! I was looking for specific instructions. 😒
I've done some videos about mailserver and dns records already, this was a follow up ;)
What about running email server on VPS?
Think that doesn't make a huge difference where it's hosted, as long as you're fully responsible
@@christianlempa we only connect users as pop3 (minimum 1gb box) with 250 accounts.. what you will suggest? Professional email or vps with cpanel hosting? I am confused
I like your Glatze
Lol 🤣
Some industries it is absolutely vital to run your own mail server. Defence for example. Also the sex and crypto industry. I run my own mail server because I have been blocked, censored, deplatformed, silenced, etc for my interest in Bitcoin and the Thailand nightlife and trying to send emails to people that share my interests. It was a lot of time, effort and work to set up my mail server but very rewarding to take back my power from big tech.
Sounds like you SHOULD be blocked, censored, deplatformed, silenced, etc.
Do a tutorial on YT or even on a web page. Some of us *will pay* for a good Postfix - Dovecot - Thunderbird guide that actually works.
How's bottom going these days.
OMG! If I didn't know better, I'd swear you're my lost son! Even my girfriend is astonished at the resemblance! Great work! Great video! Great Style! Keep on woking like that! Btw: You just convinced me not to host my own mail server along my streaming server, which is stressful enough just as it is!
Your argument can be used for anything selfhosted like Nextcloud, VPN
running my own, none of that linux installation stuff, this software is production quality on windows, point and click, free, no need of commercial license and has all sorts of bells and whistles, from banning persistent hackers to connecting to a virus agent, super clean and easy to do. Host as many domains and email addresses or aliases as I want, without worrying about the hosting provider charging me for this that or the other. It is kind of like freedom. The only issue is that I am running all this stuff from my laptop - lol - and if I am not at home and the laptop shuts down or goes into automatic update with reboot etc etc, then trouble but, hence, for that I use hotmail or gmail to reach contacts. No worries. Back to the jungle.
You should add Sponsored by Microsoft in your title!
Then Microsoft should have paid me, too 🙈
#1 reason for hosting your own mail server - YOU OWN YOUR OWN DATA
case and point... Project Veritas - Feds had a secret tap on Microsoft to send them all of their mail
I guess that's a common misconception about mail. Your mail is sent across multiple mail gateways and resides always on your end and the recipient/sender. You never OWN it. It's always stored on multiple endpoint where you have no control over the data processing and encryption.
@@christianlempa for example... Office 365 is an exchange server... outlook is the client of the exchange server.
exchange holds the remote PST file you of course can move mail from one pst file to another, but still, exchange holds your data on their server...
if I were to run my own "exchange" server or "IMAP" server, the remote PST file would be on my server...
the recipient manages what they receive on their own servers (so if I sent to them... it may reside on an exchange server or Gmail server, but that is on them)
it is also important to note that cross-server SMTP transition IS NEVER ENCRYPTED (NEVER HAS) thus if you send from your O365 to Gmail, communication from exchange to Gmail is free text, unencrypted ... just extra gee-whiz information.
email is never considered safe, nor secure, but my server, my data is still the case... Gmail's server, Gmail's data etc...
with all this in mind... if govt wants access to ALL my email... they simply need to subpena gmail or Microsoft vs finding all recipients that are gmail or o365... you are never fully free, but make it hard as you can at least... I don't trust proton either (they could get a warrant just the same as Microsoft or gmail)
keep in mind, I don't think I am doing anything illegal or cause for govt intrusion... but I prefer to be private just as well.
but thanks for the reply (I feel special)
oh and for the record, things are trying more and more to move to a centralized internet of few vendors hold the keys and making it harder for small individuals to get into the markets
@@James-li8cm you just gave yourself the explanation why O365 and self-hosted makes not much difference when it comes to email privacy.
I don't know if you have watched the entire video but I mentioned this point already: if you want to do secure mail, you need to do end-to-end encryption with something like PGP, otherwise you never know where your mail is going to, where it's stored or processed.
Once it leaves your mail server (what is always the case with mail) you're out of control anyway, O365, gmail or self-hosted.
@@christianlempa Of course not. But that is not the case. The fish which doesn't swim too close to the swarm avoids the drag net. In most cases one uses the mail server to store a long history of mails with the entire social graph. We had some spectacular mail leak cases. As a German national I'm not covered by the US constitution and hence any US entity has the right to run queries against my data (and can even be instructed to do so by the US government) That's why some German government structures avoid US servers alltogether (while others use them with pleasure - no clear tendency as of now)
Deutch?
What kind of Luke Smith is this?
This is the soy version I believe, since it's recommending SaaS. Personally I prefer the swarthy deepfake Luke
Only for learning?
In my opinion, yes
@@christianlempa In my use case, I have a startup company and I need to create a mail server to automate emails without depending on bulk mail services. Just sharing... Thanks for the tutorials.
Well in your case it might actually make sense ;)
@@rakeshpk4991 you can run SMTP through Deno and that won't be an issue
@@softwarelivre2389 Thanks.
I don't understand the point of view taken in this video. With any type of home-labbing, from an email server to a media server, the well-understood assumption is that the user is responsible for all the sever's maintenance/upkeep. Knowing what you are getting into is nothing new. And as for e2e encryption, there are plenty of email clients that have that optional feature built in to set up pretty easily. Almost none of the big services (e.g. gmail, Microsoft) do e2e encryption anyways (at least, not yet) so the same dangers apply...at least your data is not being sold to the highest bidder when you do it yourself.
its the best idea :3
you got paid
It blows my mind that setting your own mail server is so complicated. I assume that is made on purpose. And everyone uses that excuse "Security issues". But recommend Saas is in my opinion ridiculous but coming from a "rich german guy" I'm not surprised....
You just disqualified yourself with the last sentence
@@christianlempa Truth hurts
You forgot to mention Microsoft paid you to tell us we should use Microsoft.
I wish they had paid me ;)
I don't believe for a second that M$ secure - that is just me. Look at Windows and how secure and bloated those are. Not to mention you are spied upon as well. I self host my email since 2008.
Protonmail sold user data
Only from the freemail users, or also from the paying customers?
Don't always believe what you're reading in a YT comment ;)
Everybody can run their own mail server.
For a couple of days maybe ? :)
The sad truth of the fact is that mail is a dead protocol. There is a reason why Gmail is so successful, and the guys behind Rails is trying to create Hey.
Once you start your own server, you condemn yourself in a hell of managing spam lists, black lists, white lists, DOS attacks, etc etc.
It is much better to just pay for it and forget about it. Its not worth it.
And consider taking mail totally out of your critical flow. There should be ways people can reach you without resorting to mail.
Gmail successful?
For businees mail?
For private personal mail?
I don't think so.
Most folks don't want spam or "coincidental" ads soon after emailing a friend about changing their car.
if you have sponserd video you should tell so. If Microsoft is sponsering tell so.
No one sponsored the video...
No examples bad video Basicly Microsoft commercial
Microsoft is the worst choice. Once the IRS is up to your ass they comply without any further questions. I am speaking out of the experience. I am hoping for a Russian-Mail-SAAS. They do not care about your privacy either, but they do not collaborate with any authorities.
Nope.
Crap ...
sellout 🙄
I hate Microsoft and 4 eyes 👀
You are talking far basic :(
Das "Rucksackdeutsch" ist echt grässlich... Sprich doch lieber gleich in Deiner Muttersprache...
Nö