Good mail server for selfhosting

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨crony@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

So I’m migrating stuff from my old server to a new provider and only thing left is email.

The problem is I used luke smith’s emailwiz script ( the script and setup itself isn’t a problem ) because it uses users for managing users with dovecot and friends to setup a mail server.

So now I’m looking for a new email server to selfhost (preferably docker/podman) that in the future I can easilly migrate.Would also love if somebody has a reccomendation on how I could backuo and import emails from the old server.

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smiletolerantly@awful.systems ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s a bit unconventional maybe, but I vote simple-nixos-mailserver - IF you are curious / willing to learn nix. It’s essentially just sanely configured dovecot, postfix, rspamd.

My config for those three combined is about 15 lines, and I have never had an issue with them. Also on another 5-10 lines for Roundcube as a webmail client.

Since it’s Nix, everything is declarative, so should SOMETHING happen to the server, you can be up and running again super quickly, with the exact same setup.

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- crony@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I use nixos on my desktop, the server is a debian one but might be good to install nix on it.
  
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  - smiletolerantly@awful.systems ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    In that case I can really highly recommend it. Nixos on the server is fantastic anyways, and the only hurdle to recommending simple-nixos-mailserver is that most people are not familiar with nix… 😄
    
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ShortN0te@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Mailcow is amazing.

Importing exporting i would just use any mailclient and drag-drop them over. Depending on how many Mailboxes you have to transfer.

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- crony@lemmy.cronyakatsuki.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I just have to import only one. Might just use thunderbird for that.
  
  Will test out mailcow and see how it goes.
  
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k4j8@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Stalwart is gaining momentum. I haven’t used it, but it’s worth a look. stalw.art

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- ShortN0te@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Looks amazing. But the dual licensing scares me. The open variant could be artificially limited in functionality or could end up basic abandon ware.
  
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  - Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    A project ending as abandonware is always a possibility. One reason projects get abandoned is losing funding, which can be secured by using dual licensing and selling some features to businesses.
    
    They use AGPL so even if they broke their promise and restricted features, it could still be developed further (even if no new features got added). NGINX also uses a dual license.
    
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- truthfultemporarily@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  This is probably the way, because a traditional “mail server” is actually 4-5 different servers working together.
  
  postfix for SMTP
  
  dovecot for IMAP
  
  amavis to plug in…
  
  spamassassin as anti spam
  
  clam-av as antivirus
  
  And they can all be very easily misconfigured to break everything completely. Great learning experience though.
  
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muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’ve never messed with it but I’ve heard mail servers are a pain in the ass.

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- ShortN0te@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  This has been said over and over again. I have been hosting Mail now for over 2 years and have yet to encounter any problems. Although, i would not recommend to set it up manually and rather advise to use one of the ‘all in one’ suggested solutions here in the thread.
  
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  - muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Don’t u need a static ipv4 or something? I looked into it a while back even got the point of deploying a docker container but the config was so awful I gave up.
    
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- Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Extremely.
  
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- Joelk111@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, all the threads I came across when I looked into this were like “Self host everything! Except email” so I haven’t looked into it.
  
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ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Another vote for Mailcow-dockerized. Used it for about 5 years now and never had a problem.

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Xanza@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Can’t beat Mox: www.xmox.nl

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sxan@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I was going to ask if anyone had experience with Maddy, which is an all-in-one solution I’ve been eyeballing for a while.

Getting DKIM and postfix set up correctly was such a PITA, and then dovecot, I’m nervous about having to go through all that again and fretting about accidentally configuring an open relay, so I haven’t tried it yet. But it looks nice, and has been around for a couple of years.

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- andocas@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I’ve been using Maddy for about a year. I haven’t had any complaints, although my use case is very basic (running on bare metal, with just a handful of inboxes). DKIM is never pleasant but the Maddy configuration is straightforward enough.
  
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  - sxan@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Thank you. I may try it; postfix seems to give me grief ever other update, like they can’t leave the damned config file alone.
    
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- ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  mxtoolbox.com will help a lot with making sure you’re configured correctly.
  
  And look at Mailcow if you’re nervous about setting up another server, it’s bulletproof and mature.
  
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  - sxan@midwest.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I miss the old days, before you had to worry about spam.
    
    I’m not OP, and I have everything set up fine now; Mailcow would replace what I currently have with the same software components, so I don’t see any value there - for myself.
    
    Something like Maddy is completely at odds with the Unix philosophy, and yet I’ve fought enough with postfix to dislike it enough to want to try an all-in-one. I dread the DKIM setup, though; that took so much time, and the mail server configuration wasn’t the hard part. Maybe now I’ve got it configured for my domains, switching email server software will be easier.
    
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- catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  
  fretting about accidentally configuring an open relay
  
  That’s easy enough to test. Try sending mail from the Internet to an address outside your domain, both from a real sender and a sender spoofing your own domain.
  
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Smash@lemmy.self-hosted.site ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’ve been using mailu for years without probelms

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- witten@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Same! Okay, not without problems, because running a mailserver isn’t maintenance-free. But Mailu has been generally solid and it works with Docker. (And Podman, unofficially.)
  
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vext01@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I use OpenSMTPD for mail delivery, dovecot for IMAP, fdm for filtering and some tool I forget the name of for DKIM signing.

To bulk move mail around, just move the maildirs.

(Hosting email is a pain)

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- Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  After 20+ years of hosting my email in a similar way (postfix…) I decoded to explore the “all in ones” like stalwart and mailcow.
  
  Stalwart looks promising because its a new approach, supposedly more streamlined and efficient. Will post back in a few months.
  
  I am not worried about stalwart dual license, the overall feeling seems to be of trust.
  
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WhyFlip@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If only this wasn’t asked 50 times in the past 7 days. SEARCH.

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- Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  A forum is good for searches. Social media is good for blind repost and “me me me” posting.
  
  That’s life
  
  So sad we abandoned the forum approach.
  
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lolonaut@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I have used mailinabox.email (I think there is a docker version of it) and am quite happy with it.

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