All this new excitement with Lemmy and federation has got me thinking that maybe I should learn to run my own instance. What always comes up though is how email is the orginal federated technology.

I am looking at proxmox and see that is has a built in email server, so now I am wondering if it is time to role my own.

I stopped using gmail a long time ago, and right now I use ProtonMail, but I am super frustrated with the dumb limitation of only having a single account for the app. I get why they do it, and I am willing to pay, but it is pricey and I don’t know if that is my best option. I guess it is worth it since ProtonVPN is included. It looks like they are expanding their suite.

Is it worth it? Can I make it secure? Is it stupid to run it off a local computer on my home network?

  • Been using mailcow too. Pretty solid setup. Gmail doesn’t play nice with spam though even though SPF, dkim, and dmarc are properly setup. I ended up having to relay through sendgrid to ensure emails for delivered.

    Still don’t regret it though.

    • Maybe google blocks large IP-blocks of vps-hosters like digital-ocean then? I moved My mail-setup from a 15y old ip with best reputation to a new one on the vps-hoster that is listed as provider on the mailcow-site. I have no problems at all, I have DMARC reports enabled and all mails to gmail are passing.

      The only provider that was blocking the ip was german telekom, t-online. I wrote a mail to the abuse/postmaster and with some asking for imprint on the webpage that the ip was pointing at, they whitelisted the ip in 24h.

      mailcow has some sort of dns-settings agent that shows the dns-settings for every domain, rDNS and DKIM, DMARC, SPF and check these settings with the values reported by the DNS.