Anyone interested in a plug-n-play personal email server? reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- borgerm91 · 2023-11-21 06:29 I have been a self-hoster for over a decade with various services like email, Nextcloud and Jellyfin. Many people I meet are interested in a home email server setup but get hung up on the details around domain registration, port forwarding and the hoops you have to jump through with ISPs to receive and send email. I am imagining a hockey puck sized computer which is your email storage. Your email would stay in your control, never on a cloud system to be harvested. The service aspect would be providing a preconfigured VPN, DNS and email relay. Would anyone be interested in a truly "plug-n-play" device and service that handles all these details? If so, subscribe for updates at [http://www.mailpuck.com](http://www.mailpuck.com) or reply to this post! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Azsde · 2023-11-21 07:06 How are you going to support all the different providers to create the DNS entries ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-21 07:16 The only way I would see this work is if you have the whole email suite on a RPi that you sell to clients with preloaded software. That software is connected via VPN to your central servers for ingress and egress, you will deliver and receive the mail, not their devices, which means restricting mail flow by default (like 10 mails per hour or something, enough for personal use). Add a central domain management system for their domains on your end (add simply MX and SFP for them), and then WebUI access to their local device at home, preferable with an app not a browser app. Do this, and you can claim that all your email is safely stored in your home, all you do is the ingress and egress to make sure email is delivered properly as well as all the DKIM and SFP stuff. A better approach would be to make the ingress and egress decentralized, so that people can either have the email puck to host their mail, and others can host egress and ingress, and are auto monitored by a few monitoring nodes that make sure the egress and ingress points are properly and safely configured and are not used to deliver SPAM. Could all be open source and free, or closed source for $/year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-11-21 07:28 Doesn’t all of this defeats the purpose of having it hosted on your home? What you are describing is basically a copy of your mailbox, no? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-21 08:14 No, you still host the data at your place. You will not be able to egress email from your home connection, ever, without a relay that will deliver the emails for you. Same goes with ingress. It’s much easier for such a project to offer the ingress/egress service (just like people use Tailscale or Cloudflare tunnels for example). You still host your own mailbox, and you still are in control of the data, but you can’t be in control of the mail flow, this is simply not possible thanks to the abuse of email for SPAM. If your email does not get delivered, there is no point in sending email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skylord_123 · 2023-11-21 09:20 I setup and managed an email server at one point. Never again. I host all sorts of stuff but email is just a PITA. It's only been getting more complicated since I last tried. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rrrmmmrrrmmm · 2023-11-21 12:54 I don't understand. You mean something [Stalwart mail server](https://stalw.art/) on a raspberry pi or so? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-11-21 14:26 The point still stands. If you can’t send or receive, then the data is just a mailbox as if created by, say, Thunderbird. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-21 15:02 No, the mailserver, the system holding all your mailboxes and configurations and webaccess and so on is running in your home. Only traffic (egress/ingress) flows through a provider because you will not be able to send email from a non-static IP address at all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-11-21 16:37 I think we are talking about the same thing but not on the same page. It has been a while since I used a local mail client, but I remember well that Thunderbird stored all the mail and configuration locally (i.e.: mailbox. Literally a file called mailbox). I still needed a POP and SMTP server to send/receive email, but it was hosted locally. This is what I'm talking about, and it seems you are also confirming it. Not sure what is the confusion here? My point is that without the send and receive also being hosted locally, what you are describing is what Thunderbird used to be ~15 years ago (possibly now too, but I haven't used it since). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-21 17:25 Because thundebird is not an email server, its a client. If you don't know the difference between a server and a client I suggest you read up on what an email server and a MTA is. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dazchad · 2023-11-21 17:53 An email server that doesn't send or receive email is not an email server. > That software is connected via VPN to your central servers for ingress and egress, you will deliver and receive the mail, not their devices What you are describing is a client. In any case, we are not getting anywhere. Let's agree to disagree. /thread ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-21 18:18 The server is sending and receiving email via MTA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- borgerm91 · 2023-11-21 18:26 DNS is a decentralized technology. Part of this service would provide the DNS entries for you. You don't actually create entries for every provider, DNS is built to collaborate across providers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- borgerm91 · 2023-11-21 18:28 Basically yes, the service is needed to provide ingress and egress u/ElevenNotes has pointed out. I am inspired by a similar project called The Helm which sadly shut down last year. The hardware they were providing was much more powerful. I think they just tried to tackle too much and covid surely didn't help. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- borgerm91 · 2023-11-21 19:48 You both bring up good points. This product would still be considered a "mailserver" because it would communicate over SMTP to receive and send email to the outside world (through a VPN to facilitate the usual home ISP level restrictions). MTAs (Mail Transfer Agents) speak SMTP and store your email in mbox or Maildir files. Thunderbird is a client or MUA (Mail User Agent) which can read local mbox/Maildir files or access them remotely through POP or IMAP. I am thinking of providing a hosted Roundcube instance for ease of use and supporting proxying IMAP to your device so you can use clients like Thunderbird from anywhere. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- watchdog_timer · 2023-11-22 12:56 I would be more interested in an smtp relay service like [ghettosmtp](http://ghettosmtp.com/) which could tunnel through CGNAT.