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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I run my own email server using Mailcow. It works well.
However, I do not even attempt to directly send outbound email. It's very difficult to get your server trusted by the major providers, especially Microsoft (who are very picky about email servers). I have an account with MXRoute (which is an email provider) but only use it for outbound relaying. Inbound emails go directly to my server.
For what it's worth, MXRoute is a great provider to consider if you want to move away from the large ones (Google, Microsoft, etc) but don't want to self-host.
Outbound mail seems to be what defeats this entire project. Still, I do enjoy that there are many options to make everything work.
There's various outbound mail providers, and some have free plans. For example, SMTP2Go is free for 1000 emails per month, and Mailgun is free for 5000 emails per month. What you'd do is set up your own email server, and configure it to relay via SMTP2Go or Mailgun. Your client systems don't need to know this - they just send their emails to your server, which then relays them to the relevant service.
I use Mailcow and all of this is configurable in its web UI. No need to edit config files.
Nice. That is way more emails than I ever deal with in a month. Maybe in a year. I am really conservative with my online stuff, mostly because I hated the idea of managing so much crap even if it is something I want.
So, I am going to play with Mailcow, Mailinabox, and iRedMail.
Good choices! I also tried those three. Mailcow was my favourite but maybe you'll like one of the other ones better. Mailcow uses Docker (which I prefer compared to installing software directly on the system) and has a nice admin panel. They're all good choices though.
I keep saying it but I need to get familiar with docker, especially to run all other kinds of services.
I guess I will try mailcow first.
You don't need to know too much about Docker to use Mailcow. It comes with a preconfigured
docker-compose.ymlso you just need to install Docker and follow Mailcow's installation instructions (which are pretty straightforward)If you have any spare domains that you aren't using (or domains you're not currently using email with), you could test it out with that domain before moving any domains you care about :) That's what I did.
Right on. The first domain I will buy will be a personal fun one, just to experiment and mess around. I don't quite know what professional name I want for my domain, since I don't have a brand or anything, and having just my name seems odd.