What is the nest all-in-one solution for self hosting email?

Erisa

My mailcow setup is on a 1core/2gb ram Hetzner Cloud instance, with grandfathered old pricing of ~€2.50/mo before tax.

I was almost afraid it wouldn't fit, but with Solr and ClamAV disabled it... just about does. I'm pretty sure its eating into swap but the performance doesn't seem to be impacted at all so I'm not completely sure what that swap usage is even for.

I may move it somewhere else now that I have varying other services and now that I'm relaying SMTP (Previously used it direct, Hetzner is a minefield of RBLed IPs but if you recreate the instance enough times you can luck into one that works relatively okay) but I'm a little undecided about that.

vitobotta

@Erisa said:
My mailcow setup is on a 1core/2gb ram Hetzner Cloud instance, with grandfathered old pricing of ~€2.50/mo before tax.

I was almost afraid it wouldn't fit, but with Solr and ClamAV disabled it... just about does. I'm pretty sure its eating into swap but the performance doesn't seem to be impacted at all so I'm not completely sure what that swap usage is even for.

I may move it somewhere else now that I have varying other services and now that I'm relaying SMTP (Previously used it direct, Hetzner is a minefield of RBLed IPs but if you recreate the instance enough times you can luck into one that works relatively okay) but I'm a little undecided about that.

Wow. On my server RAM usage grew of 4-5GB after installing Mailcow.

Erisa

@vitobotta said: Wow. On my server RAM usage grew of 4-5GB after installing Mailcow.

A lot of that can be shaved off by disabling Solr and ClamAV (If you don't need those, anyway) in the .envfile.
Combine that with swap on NVMe and you reach a state of "I'm surprised this even works, but I'm glad it does".

vitobotta

@Erisa said:

@vitobotta said: Wow. On my server RAM usage grew of 4-5GB after installing Mailcow.

A lot of that can be shaved off by disabling Solr and ClamAV (If you don't need those, anyway) in the .envfile.
Combine that with swap on NVMe and you reach a state of "I'm surprised this even works, but I'm glad it does".

When I do a search with my email client (Spark) using IMAP, is Solr used?

Erisa

@vitobotta said:

@Erisa said:

@vitobotta said: Wow. On my server RAM usage grew of 4-5GB after installing Mailcow.

A lot of that can be shaved off by disabling Solr and ClamAV (If you don't need those, anyway) in the .envfile.
Combine that with swap on NVMe and you reach a state of "I'm surprised this even works, but I'm glad it does".

When I do a search with my email client (Spark) using IMAP, is Solr used?

Unfortunately I don't know this for sure, because I have never used Solr on Mailcow before.

When you disable Solr, search operations still work, just slower. I would assume this affects all search operations and not just those on Mailcows webmail, but I have no way to know for sure.

Daniel15

@vitobotta said: When I do a search with my email client (Spark) using IMAP, is Solr used?

In general, any email client that does searches server-side and has a free-form text field that searches across multiple fields (from, subject, body) needs Solr to avoid being slow once the account gets large. I've got an email account with 200k emails in it, and search takes 45+ seconds without Solr (even on an NVMe drive) vs ~1-2 seconds with Solr.

One of the reasons I migrated my account away from MXRoute was because they don't use something like Solr, so search is very very slow on large accounts.

Thunderbird doesn't need it as its search index is stored locally (there's a local copy of every email in your account, and Thunderbird searches through that). I don't know if Spark builds a local index or if it relies on server-side search... Server-side needs far fewer resources on the client-side so it's more common than having a separate local index.

typicalGtaTG

can vouch for mailcow

daxterfellowes

@vitobotta said:

@Daniel15 said:
I use Mailcow and love it. Really nice software package, uses Docker, and very easy to get started with.

I'm hosting mine on a HostHatch 16GB RAM + 80GB NVMe VPS from Black Friday 2020. Currently that server is using ~8.5GB RAM but that includes Mailcow, Plex (for my personally ripped music collection), Seafile, Syncthing, and a bunch of other things. I think Mailcow is using <5GB of that RAM at the moment.

@pbx said:
modoboa has not been mentioned yet I think. I think it's less RAM hungry than mailcow.

There's nothing intrinsically different about Mailcow's RAM usage, it's just that it's a complete package including email, virus scanning, great spam filtering using rspamd, ActiveSync support, calendaring, blazing fast email search using Solr (soon to be migrated to Xapian), etc. Virus and spam scanning use a noticeable amount of RAM.

Mailcow do recommend 6GB minimum, and 8GB RAM for 5-10 users.

You can cut down RAM usage by disabling Solr and ClamAV, but then you'll lose fast searches and virus scanning, respectively. On my system, ClamAV is currently using ~1.3GB of the RAM, for whatever reason. Searches still work without Solr but they're very very very slow since it has to basically grep across the entire mailbox to do so, compared to using a properly indexed search database.

I use MXRoute for outbound relaying, just because it would take me forever to get good IP reputation anywhere near theirs.

I have 64GB on the server and with Mailcow plus a ton of other apps I am still at only 16GB of usage > @daxterfellowes said:

I ran Mailcow for about 3 years without any major issues. I just...got tired of running it, so I dumped it and managed to get an expired MXRoute plan (that ended up coming in handy later with the Google Suite migration). I did disable a lot of stuff like rspamd and Solr to save on RAM, but it's definitely a recommended "single host" application, despite being in Docker because of it's usage.

Why did you get tired of running it?

It sounds very trivial, but I was using Traefik (v1) to do frontend and TLS termination via LetsEncrypt. I hadn't had a process in place for years and would manually have to copy over the certs to Mailcow to make sure my clients connected fine. My wife wouldn't like this as our shared email was on it and there were times it was like "OK, in Gmail click here, accept any cert, click there" because I didn't do it in time. Ultimately, a lot of it just came down to "someone else can do this better and for cheaper" which allowed me to reuse the instance for another project.

vitobotta

@daxterfellowes said:

@vitobotta said:

@Daniel15 said:
I use Mailcow and love it. Really nice software package, uses Docker, and very easy to get started with.

I'm hosting mine on a HostHatch 16GB RAM + 80GB NVMe VPS from Black Friday 2020. Currently that server is using ~8.5GB RAM but that includes Mailcow, Plex (for my personally ripped music collection), Seafile, Syncthing, and a bunch of other things. I think Mailcow is using <5GB of that RAM at the moment.

@pbx said:
modoboa has not been mentioned yet I think. I think it's less RAM hungry than mailcow.

There's nothing intrinsically different about Mailcow's RAM usage, it's just that it's a complete package including email, virus scanning, great spam filtering using rspamd, ActiveSync support, calendaring, blazing fast email search using Solr (soon to be migrated to Xapian), etc. Virus and spam scanning use a noticeable amount of RAM.

Mailcow do recommend 6GB minimum, and 8GB RAM for 5-10 users.

You can cut down RAM usage by disabling Solr and ClamAV, but then you'll lose fast searches and virus scanning, respectively. On my system, ClamAV is currently using ~1.3GB of the RAM, for whatever reason. Searches still work without Solr but they're very very very slow since it has to basically grep across the entire mailbox to do so, compared to using a properly indexed search database.

I use MXRoute for outbound relaying, just because it would take me forever to get good IP reputation anywhere near theirs.

I have 64GB on the server and with Mailcow plus a ton of other apps I am still at only 16GB of usage > @daxterfellowes said:

I ran Mailcow for about 3 years without any major issues. I just...got tired of running it, so I dumped it and managed to get an expired MXRoute plan (that ended up coming in handy later with the Google Suite migration). I did disable a lot of stuff like rspamd and Solr to save on RAM, but it's definitely a recommended "single host" application, despite being in Docker because of it's usage.

Why did you get tired of running it?

It sounds very trivial, but I was using Traefik (v1) to do frontend and TLS termination via LetsEncrypt. I hadn't had a process in place for years and would manually have to copy over the certs to Mailcow to make sure my clients connected fine. My wife wouldn't like this as our shared email was on it and there were times it was like "OK, in Gmail click here, accept any cert, click there" because I didn't do it in time. Ultimately, a lot of it just came down to "someone else can do this better and for cheaper" which allowed me to reuse the instance for another project.

I had the same problem with certs, but I added a cron task to copy them over from Nginx Proxy Manager. Hopefully it works fine over time.

mosquitoguy

@daxterfellowes said:
It sounds very trivial, but I was using Traefik (v1) to do frontend and TLS termination via LetsEncrypt. I hadn't had a process in place for years and would manually have to copy over the certs to Mailcow to make sure my clients connected fine. My wife wouldn't like this as our shared email was on it and there were times it was like "OK, in Gmail click here, accept any cert, click there" because I didn't do it in time. Ultimately, a lot of it just came down to "someone else can do this better and for cheaper" which allowed me to reuse the instance for another project.

Mail-in-a-box renews letsencrypt certificates automatically. It even installs OS updates.

pbx

@mosquitoguy said: Mail-in-a-box

This one seems nice, never tried yet. How much resources does it uses (without ClamaV)? Thanks

Daniel15

@mosquitoguy said: Mail-in-a-box renews letsencrypt certificates automatically.

So does Mailcow so I'm not entirely sure why the people above are experiencing issues. I haven't had any issues with Mailcow's Let's Encrypt certs, but I'll have to double check how I've configured mine.

miau

Can mod or someone please fix the title typo? It's strangely bothering me so much 😭

vitobotta

@Daniel15 said:

@mosquitoguy said: Mail-in-a-box renews letsencrypt certificates automatically.

So does Mailcow so I'm not entirely sure why the people above are experiencing issues. I haven't had any issues with Mailcow's Let's Encrypt certs, but I'll have to double check how I've configured mine.

You only have a problem with the certificate if you use a reverse proxy in front of Mailcow. Otherwise you can let Mailcow manage certificates directly with its Let's Encrypt integration.

@miau said:
Can mod or someone please fix the title typo? It's strangely bothering me so much 😭

LOL I hadn't noticed it

Daniel15

@vitobotta said: if you use a reverse proxy in front of Mailcow

This is fine - Just use the same certificate for the reverse proxy. I just checked my Nginx config and this is what I do:

ssl_certificate /opt/mailcow-dockerized/data/assets/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /opt/mailcow-dockerized/data/assets/ssl/key.pem;

Their reverse proxy documentation says to do this: https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs/post_installation/firststeps-rp/#nginx . They have docs for Traefik on the same page.

vitobotta

@Daniel15 said:

@vitobotta said: if you use a reverse proxy in front of Mailcow

This is fine - Just use the same certificate for the reverse proxy. I just checked my Nginx config and this is what I do:

ssl_certificate /opt/mailcow-dockerized/data/assets/ssl/cert.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /opt/mailcow-dockerized/data/assets/ssl/key.pem;

Their reverse proxy documentation says to do this: https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs/post_installation/firststeps-rp/#nginx . They have docs for Traefik on the same page.

I use Nginx Proxy Manager so I just scheduled a monthly task that copies the certificate managed by NPM to Mailcow.

karjaj

@pbx said:

@mosquitoguy said: Mail-in-a-box

This one seems nice, never tried yet. How much resources does it uses (without ClamaV)? Thanks

I have my personal MIAB installed on VirMach's 1Gb VPS. Librenms show 429,62Mb Memory usage and 258,98 Swap usage just now. MiAB is easy to install, script installs all parts. GUI show software updates and some times ask to reboot, if kernel etc. is updated. Very easy to use and stable.

pbx

@karjaj said: I have my personal MIAB installed on VirMach's 1Gb VPS. Librenms show 429,62Mb Memory usage and 258,98 Swap usage just now. MiAB is easy to install, script installs all parts. GUI show software updates and some times ask to reboot, if kernel etc. is updated. Very easy to use and stable.

Nice, gonna have to give it a try one of these days! Thanks

handyhost

We use mailbaby with DirectAdmin

einverne

Does anyone mention the mailu, it's all open-source, and it can be deployed with docker.

MikePT

@cnbeining said:
I am lazy.

@MikePT ’s reseller plan(unlimited domain and seats) with Nextcloud installed (to also get CalDav) + (potentially) inbound SPAM filtering by Mailgun/SendGrid plus built in Spamassassin, running JetBackup to S3 and DA backup to FTP space(1ficher is actually pretty good for this use case, basically retaining 30 days of backup for me).

Should I want to be more hands on I will setup MailCow in Docker on a VPS with outbound SMTP relay via Mailgun/SendGrid/SparkPost and similar inbound SPAM filtering setup that runs daily backup. I can’t see myself going back to running anything directly on “bare metal” anymore except for Nginx as load balancer and SSL termination.

Bonus: I am testing Onlyoffice and Collabora CODE with Nextcloud and have to admit that Onlyoffice is much more modern and closer to how Google Docs runs, but licensing and the developer’s backstabbing to the community is nasty. CODE is more Libreoffice on browser so takes much more resources to run. Having said that I have not find any SaaS PowerPoint replacement that can insert video file in the slides directly so I suppose Office is here to stay.

We have quite a few customers that signup for hosting for email-only, which is OK.

Each DA account can send up to 200 emails/per day, considering it's delivered through MailChannels, it's a nice deal.

Cheers!

dotcomUNDERGROUND

@vitobotta said:
Can IRedMail be installed with Docker?

https://hub.docker.com/r/iredmail/mariadb
beta though

vitobotta

@dotcomUNDERGROUND said:

@vitobotta said:
Can IRedMail be installed with Docker?

https://hub.docker.com/r/iredmail/mariadb
beta though

I checked it but I went with Mailcow because it seemed much easier. I am very happy with it

fedor

still nobody mentioned straight way of postfix + dovecot + opendkim.
pros:

• easy enough to configure for a simple own mail setup
• postfix and opendkim are secure by design (postfix is authored by wietse venema). dovecot not but it's actually not needed to be world-visible most of time
• perfect performance. ~100MB RAM and 1 core will be enough for you, though io may become bottleneck when syncing few thousands of emails with IMAP
• postfix allows half of whistles and bells in the world to be done with configs, another half w/ milter interface (even easier than configs)
• well documented
• once done, requires zero attention for the rest of the life: not 0.01, strictly 0. just subscribe to cve

cons(?):

• not likely there are official dockers
• not designed to be out of the box solution
• no web-interface included
• requires some hours of reading to configure properly (tbh not, plenty of guides around: copypaste, replace domain, PROFIT!11)

vitobotta

@fedor said:
still nobody mentioned straight way of postfix + dovecot + opendkim.
pros:

• easy enough to configure for a simple own mail setup
• postfix and opendkim are secure by design (postfix is authored by wietse venema). dovecot not but it's actually not needed to be world-visible most of time
• perfect performance. ~100MB RAM and 1 core will be enough for you, though io may become bottleneck when syncing few thousands of emails with IMAP
• postfix allows half of whistles and bells in the world to be done with configs, another half w/ milter interface (even easier than configs)
• well documented
• once done, requires zero attention for the rest of the life: not 0.01, strictly 0. just subscribe to cve

cons(?):

• not likely there are official dockers
• not designed to be out of the box solution
• no web-interface included
• requires some hours of reading to configure properly (tbh not, plenty of guides around: copypaste, replace domain, PROFIT!11)

Why would I go this route now (I did it years ago) when things like Mailcow make it a lot easier and quicker to set up? And with nice UIs etc?

john_sd3

give mailinabox a try. it will work painlessly. i am running one for the last year + without any hiccups