Private Email Server on UnRaid or Hosted Email?

[ronni3]

What do you all do for email? I no longer wish to use my ISP's (Comcast) email and want something that doesn't tie me to my ISP. Actually about to switch providers so have a real need to make the change.

 

My question is: Are there any Dockers that are already set up to serve as an email server/gateway? If I would like to entertain having my own private email address that I own; what exactly would I need to do? Or is my best option to use gmail, yahoo, etc?

[ashman70]

Hosting your email can he a chore, not only to setup but to maintain, also your ISP might block port 25 which is the default port for SMTP used in email. You are likely better off just going with a gmail address, that way its accessible anywhere on any device and you don't have to worry about maintaining it.

[BRiT]

As far as personal email address and accounts, I have free accounts on all the major providers, such as GMail or Outlook.

 

As far as hosting for your own domains for yourself and others, I used to do my own domain email hosting using SendMail for a number of years (decade or more), but things became a lot easier for me when the larger mail providers started offering cheap hosting or even free hosting such as GMail.

 

 

[kizer]

Personally I say use Gmail or something of the sort. Let them deal with all the problems of hosting and constant updates or security hole patching.

[Helmonder]

What do you all do for email? I no longer wish to use my ISP's (Comcast) email and want something that doesn't tie me to my ISP. Actually about to switch providers so have a real need to make the change.

 

My question is: Are there any Dockers that are already set up to serve as an email server/gateway? If I would like to entertain having my own private email address that I own; what exactly would I need to do? Or is my best option to use gmail, yahoo, etc?

 

What really helps is buy an email domain forwarding account, it will cost you tens of euro per year and makes it possible to relay that email address to every physical emailbox you want... So switching providers or preference does not make a difference anymore.. If you choose your last name (I did) you can also  use it for your whole family..

[trurl]

What do you all do for email? I no longer wish to use my ISP's (Comcast) email and want something that doesn't tie me to my ISP. Actually about to switch providers so have a real need to make the change.

 

My question is: Are there any Dockers that are already set up to serve as an email server/gateway? If I would like to entertain having my own private email address that I own; what exactly would I need to do? Or is my best option to use gmail, yahoo, etc?

 

What really helps is buy an email domain forwarding account, it will cost you tens of euro per year and makes it possible to relay that email address to every physical emailbox you want... So switching providers or preference does not make a difference anymore.. If you choose your last name (I did) you can also  use it for your whole family..

This is what I do. I have had the same email address since 1996 despite changing providers many times since then.

[jevans04]

I also bought my own domain name so I could keep the same email address and not be tethered to an ISP or other company.

I used Outlook to host the email server until they stopped providing that service for free.

I recently switched to using Zoho for free email hosting.

 

http://www.blogsynthesis.com/zoho-free-email-hosting/

 

 

[opentoe]

What do you all do for email? I no longer wish to use my ISP's (Comcast) email and want something that doesn't tie me to my ISP. Actually about to switch providers so have a real need to make the change.

 

My question is: Are there any Dockers that are already set up to serve as an email server/gateway? If I would like to entertain having my own private email address that I own; what exactly would I need to do? Or is my best option to use gmail, yahoo, etc?

 

I got myself a managed VPS account. You also can get an un-managed for much less, but I paid the little extra for the managed. Slapped on cpanel/WHM and now I can add any domain I need to along with other functions like setting up forums, shopping carts, whatever comes to mind. I do have a Gmail account, but the spam just gets out of control. With my personal account on my VPS I have spam prevention options. I also provide email addresses for family members ( over 10 of them ) that are used daily. All have webmail options and also can be used with Outlook/Thunderbird. I share the cost of the VPS with my Dad. Since I use the VPS for other functions the price is well worth it. Be careful, lots of SMTP servers get blacklisted very quickly and the ISP couldn't care at all. I found a very good VPS host which manages their network very good and never had issues. Going on 3+ years already. Lowendbox is a site you can shop for a VPS. I also have tried most of the "free" SMTP mail relays/sites out there and always had some kind of issue, so I just stuck with what worked for me. Good luck!

 

[PeterB]

To confirm what others have recommended - I also have been using my own domain name for several years, even though I have emigrated from UK to Philippines.  Originally (in UK) I relied on my ISP to host my domain and mail server but, since 2011, I have been  using 5quidhost - relatively inexpensive but very reliable.

 

However, I also run a mail server on my unRAID box - I created plugins for dovecot and mpop.  This allows me to keep archives of all my emails without paying for a large amount of online storage, allows me to access all my emails even if the Internet connection fails, saves on Internet bandwidth and gives faster response (Internet here, like the electricity supply, is slow, unreliable and expensive).

 

At the moment I am running mpop once every five minutes to check for new emails at 5quid - one day I will have a look at the possibility of having 5quid push my emails to me.

[xthursdayx]

On 2/9/2016 at 12:53 AM, PeterB said:

To confirm what others have recommended - I also have been using my own domain name for several years, even though I have emigrated from UK to Philippines.  Originally (in UK) I relied on my ISP to host my domain and mail server but, since 2011, I have been  using 5quidhost - relatively inexpensive but very reliable.

 

However, I also run a mail server on my unRAID box - I created plugins for dovecot and mpop.  This allows me to keep archives of all my emails without paying for a large amount of online storage, allows me to access all my emails even if the Internet connection fails, saves on Internet bandwidth and gives faster response (Internet here, like the electricity supply, is slow, unreliable and expensive).

 

At the moment I am running mpop once every five minutes to check for new emails at 5quid - one day I will have a look at the possibility of having 5quid push my emails to me.

8

Hey @PeterB I know that this is an old post, but I'm looking to do exactly what you mention here - use my unRAID box to download all my email to keep my online storage free and provide offline access and archiving. Are these dovecot and mpop plugins still what you use, and if so, are they things you might be able to share?

[rutherford]

I fell into this thread by searching for an email solution on unRaid docker. I feel all the comments in here for sure. I used to host my own email server, and it was a bit of a nightmare with spam, and Squirrelmail interfaces, or IMAP POP desktop applications, it was rough. Constant work. BUT, and this strays from the Original Post, what about folks who want ultimate privacy with their email? A self hosted email solution seems like the way to go. The data is in your own personal closet, and it will totally protect you if you run for office one day.

Some other things that can be self-hosted solutions: Nextcloud, Bitwarden, a webserver.

I didn't see anyone mentioning any of those solutions on here. Any suggestions?

 

The APPS search for 'email' comes back with only a handful of results:

OnlyOffice email

post.io

Edited August 2, 2020 by dkerlee

[Jessie]

On 7/13/2020 at 4:11 AM, dkerlee said:

I fell into this thread by searching for an email solution on unRaid docker. I feel all the comments in here for sure. I used to hose my own email server, and it was a bit of a nightmare with spam, and Squirrelmail interfaces, or IMAP POP desktop applications, it was rough. Constant work. BUT, and this strays from the Original Post, what about folks who want ultimate privacy with their email? A self hosted email solution seems like the way to go. The data is in your own personal closet, and it will totally protect you if you run for office one day.

Some other things that can be self-hosted solutions: Nextcloud, Bitwarden, a webserver.

I didn't see anyone mentioning any of those solutions on here. Any suggestions?

 

The APPS search for 'email' comes back with only a handful of results:

OnlyOffice email

post.io

I'm in the same boat looking for a solution.  I've run sbs servers for a long time. They are now redundant.  Can't find any dockers that i could get to work, so looking at running Nethserver as a VM on unraid.  It has an imap mail server that looks promising.  Any thoughts??

[rutherford]

Judging by a couple of the posts from @JonathanM I'm thinking this may certainly be a can of worms not worth opening.

For me, I want my emails to remain private. Perhaps simply moving all my email over to a different super-double-secret email provider like Protonmail or Hushmail or similar would be the better way to go.

==============================================================

 

Here are some smart people talking about it:

I found some self-hosted email solutions here:

https://medevel.com/list-os-mail-server/

That mentioned:

iRedMail - does have a docker here, but not an unRaid docker.

 

ah, here we go:

post.io has an unRaid docker "poste", support forum thread

I've got port 443 mapped to some SWAG thing that some Spacedinvader youtubes got me into. Ah, it's Nextcloud and SWAG. Post.io requires a fully-qualified-domain-name FQDN. I think that means you own a domain. I do. I'll get into this sometime and post back.

Edited October 26, 2021 by dkerlee

[BenN]

@dkerlee How did you go with "poste" looking to do this for myself and want to know if it works?

[rutherford]

I put the brakes on the self hosted option, and moved to Protonmail.

 

There are finer points of email that I'm only just now becoming aware of; SPF records for instance. Senders need to have verified (?) IP addresses and URL for messages that arrive to get to inboxes smoothly. I have a hunch a self-hosted server would encounter delivery horrors of SPAM folders etc.

 

So Protonmail. They've been pretty darn good. Had to upgrade storage a bit, and the iPhone app leaves a little to be desired, but it ain't bad. Been chugging away with this setup for a few months. I'm happy, and partially away from the Googles.

 

Re SPF records. I have a custom domain, and needed to make sure my domain's single SPF record was up to snuff. For me, that was (someone let me know if I should not post actual numbers. I think it's all public domain anyhow. Like the stupid thumb over license plates on craigslist cars)

 

v=spf1 include:_spf.protonmail.ch +a +mx +ip4:192.232.219.222 +include:spf.websitewelcome.com +include:spf2.websitewelcome.com ~all

 

https://www.dmarcanalyzer.com/spf/checker/

Edited November 22, 2021 by dkerlee

[PSYCHOPATHiO]

I've been hosting my own email server for years & actually have 4 domains on it, but I use one only the other domains are set up as cach-all.  I started with an unmanaged VPS for playing around and testing but through time & more experience I host mine now on a VM on my unraid setup connected with ADDC LDAP & have another VM with proxmox mail gateway installed acting as buffer filtering my email from spam and viruses <-- note I have no port forwarding so I have another remove VPS server with pfsense connected via VPN forwarding what I need back to my local pfsense to keep everything running on 5G internet.

 

So basically, I use a Windows server VM with a business class email server.