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Email self-hosting solution

(1) By cyberarboretum on 2026-08-22 12:19:01 [source]

I've always been using Luke Smiths emailwiz. But maybe there is a better solution you guys are using.

(2) By SquatnDog on 2026-08-22 19:27:12 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

This looks awesome. Why are you shopping for another mail system?

(3) By cyberarboretum on 2026-08-22 20:26:24 in reply to 2 [link] [source]

No reason tbh. Just been curious about other solutions or maybe noone bothers to host email at all since it's goofy.

(4) By joshuablais on 2026-08-23 01:56:34 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I never really got into fully self hosting, been using MXRoute for a few years now. I don't want to mess around with deliverability/warming up a server and all that stuff specifically with biz related stuff. Been using Mu4e in emacs as a client, very happy with the setup.

(5) By mattken on 2026-08-23 02:38:51 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I tried Mail-in-a-Box for a time, and it worked really well. It can also handle static website hosting if you so choose.

(6.1) By Josh (jturgeon) on 2026-09-01 05:24:21 edited from 6.0 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

I've self-hosted email on and off over a couple years, ultimately decided I did not have the time to keep up with maintenance and upfront configuration effort of the server(s), this was before I knew about configuration management tools like Ansible. My email stack was OpenBSD with OpenSMTPD, Dovecot. It was a really good learning experience and I recommend everyone try it at least once.

Would I switch to a self hosted email system as my primary, Like the other Josh mentioned deliverability is important for business and personal email. I'd rather have a contract with a paid email provider that is a little more reliable than my 1 - 2 server setup.

People argue hosting your own email is more secure, but what I've come to realise over the years is that email is not secure, and you can not make it secure unless everyone and everything starts using pgp.

There are providers like Proton and Tuta, but I just don't see a point in e2e encryption when the emails are sent via SMTP, plus you then need to use their email client / bridge program which is a pain.

Anyway I think if you read the privacy policy and the terms and conditions for a paid provider, and they are acceptable to YOU (as a primary email system solution). Use that instead of hosting your own email.

(7) By SquatnDog on 2026-09-01 18:08:55 in reply to 1 [link] [source]

JTURGEON pointed out, SMTP is not secure unless everyone is using PGP. But there's another layer to this. If you host your own email, you should understand that all spam and attacks against your mail domain are spending the hardware resources of your server to process. My approach to this is to sign-up (and $pay) for a smart-host relay from a vendor like Mailroute or Appriver. Tell them you are self-hosting and want to use their security fitlers via a smart-host relay. This will put the burden of the resource requirements on them as they apply a large security filter stack to all mail inbound or outbound. As a bonus, these vendors are now responsible for ensuring your domain is not blacklisted. Another bonus is they likely have a mail queue that pools when your server is offline.