Hi all,
I have had several shots at self hosting email over the years and my last attempt failed due to my home IP being in a dynamic pool. I thought I might try again, this time with a basic web hosting provider that I could set up email on. Any suggestions for a free/cheap provider with decent uptime?
Thanks
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All cheap/shared IP providers would be equally terrible trying to have a good reputation.
I’ve had good luck on a couple of cheap providers. I think a lot of them block port 25 by default, unless you ask, which maybe gives you a better chance. Plus DKIM and stuff are starting to help. There’s probably always some stupid mail server that will block huge swaths of IPv4 if somebody farts in the neighborhood, but I think the situation is improving.
Proton Mail is cheap. I think I paid $40 for a year and you get a bunch more stuff in addition to mail and a custom mail domain.
I use Purelymail for my primary domain’s smtp and imap server. As long as you don’t use it for nefarious purposes like automated emails, then you should be fine. My primary use is to hook it into my services such as Vaultwarden, my uptime monitors (Uptime Kuma and StatPing) and Watchtower, so maybe less than 100 per month on it. They don’t seem to mind. They have great support via Discord and it’s been close to 1.5 years I think that I’ve been with them, no downtime.
Last time I checked it was a 1 man operation. Has the bus factor gotten better since?
Yeah that is my current mail provider but the self hosting bug bites deep
I fully understand. :)
For hosting providers, you can always scout out deals on lowendbox.com or webhostingtalk.com, especially this time of year where black Friday deals are coming. Then, install something like HestiaCP (https://hesticp.com) and it will take care of the rest of the stuff like email and site hosting. Plus - with a VPS, you get a shiny new static IP you can use. :)
If you don’t want a site, that’s easy enough, just make an empty index.html page so if a curious email recipient wants to visit your site based on your email’s domain, they just get a blank page and move on.
Either that - go with a well known hosting provider which does basic cPanel hosting with low disk space.
I’ve never dared going the route of setting up an e-mail server at home mostly because of having a dynamic IP which rotates often enough to cause problems.
I have had pretty good experience with hosting an email server on AlphaVPS, InceptionHosting and just now GreenCloudVPS.
GreenCloudVPS currently have a promotion until Sunday, and there are usually promotions around Black Friday on LowEndSpirit and LowEndTalk
Most budget web hosts are going to score you a pretty spam score - the private antispam feed we use at work has “originates at a digital ocean ASN” as an automatic grey list unless it’s for a domain with an existing reputation
Just configure your outbound SMTP to use sendgrid or some other. SMTP provider. I realized this isn’t 100% self housing then, but you could still self host the inbound mail. Self housing outbound SMTP just isn’t worth it for most people IMHO due to spam lists.
Interesting. I might be able to go back to hosting on my server for inbound only. Thanks for the tip
I’d say don’t self host mail. Just use protonmail or something. You probably don’t want to hear that but you’ll just end up with something less reliable, less features and you’ll have to spend sma lot of time on it
Not my experience at all. Once my OpenSMTPD mail server was set up 3 years ago, the only time I spend on it is updates (like 20 minutes per year). Setup did take some time, but it was totally worth it to me.
I’ve bought mxroute lifetime a year ago, so far it been working really good. I use imap for my mail, my wife gets it forwarded to Gmail - both works fine.
Plus I can use mxroute smtp from my self host server to send mails from the services on it.
Could be worth to look into.
Can you provide a bit of info on this? I’m hesitating for a while on this plan, but I need at least 2 custom domains, and the possibility to have 2 users on this domains. Is this feasible with mxroute? Can’t figure this out from their faq 😅
It worked really well for me, used to have two domains on it, have one now - it made sense to move one of them to an old legacy gmail to have integrated calendar.
Anyway, been happy about mxroute, from what I read they are quite strict about not using it to bulk email, but I’m just using it for my personal mail, so that’s not an issue.
They also provide access to smtp logs in and out, makes it easy to see if an email was sent out received.
The downside is the 10gb space, but if you like me are only a few people then it’s most likely not an issue.
Thank you for this!
Two domains for personal use, no bulk sending.
That’s why I need two users actually 😅
I’ll try to reach out to them to know for sure if I can have this with only one payment!
Thanks again!
Email is too important to do on the cheap.
Chances are, all the cheap hosts have had their reputations trashed by spammers and are on blacklists.
Check out MXRoute.
You need to be a technical enough to manage domains and panel management (but not as involved as self-hosting).
They have decent support documents and responsive support.
They frequently have promotion for lifetime, multi domains, multi accounts (limited only by 10GB in storage size) email hosting.
I got mine in 2021 with 125 USD (one time payment). Hosted my work and family emails. During the period I only have 1 issue related to spam fighting and resolved with 1 day. With previous hosting price, MXRoute is already more cost effective after 1 year.
I use a 1€/month domain from strato.de, a very reputable German hoster. They support DynDNS, provide a backup mx for when my home server is offline, and I use their SMTP server as relay for sending reputation. No issues so far.
Check out infomaniak. You get an unlimited (inbox storage) email account when you buy or transfer a domain with them.
Has imap, pop3, native apps for iphone and android plus a (imo) really nice webmail client.
The company is very pro privacy too if the important to you.
I’m on my second year as a customer. Can recommend.
is there a catch-all option?
Couldnt tell you, but probably. Check their docs, which are pretty comprehensive.
I use them as IMAP storage for a few mailing lists I am subscribed to (but not for my main emails), but they do reject legitimate emails from time to time (not often, but it does happen - and those emails don’t show up in “Spam” or any logs).
That is frustrating. Does that mean those emails don’t show up even when you loud in to the webmail?
Digital Ocean is the only one I know of that doesn’t block outgoing traffic on port 25, but you need to use IPv4 only.
Also whatever IP address you get will probably already be on several spam lists, so use a service to check them, then individually follow the steps for each one to get your IP unblocked.
I moved from DO after my IP address landed on a spam list. At the time DO specifically discouraged installation of mail servers on their machines. Since then I‘ve been running my Mail in a Box server on a Vultr instance with good results.
I recommend https://migadu.com. not free, but the lowest price tier has lots of features, unlimited mailboxes etc.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters IMAP Internet Message Access Protocol for email IP Internet Protocol SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
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