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Not if you value email deliverability and your time. Its better to leave it to umpteen specialized platforms instead.
Personal - G Suite, MXRoute etc.
Transactional - SES, Sendgrid, Postmark, Sparkpost etc.
Spam - Nigerian Royalty.
Decentralization and transparency.
I agree 100%. Unless you have way too much time on your hands then it's just worth paying for a service.
@jarland I don't envy you.
I've always hosted my own mail. Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the point of paying a service (though I completely understand it) when I can do it myself. After signing up for things like MS SDNS, etc. I've never had delivery issues.
I've installed Mailcow on one of my servers and relay outgoing mails from postfix through SES
Works like a charm.
I like the reliability of using a service for my received mail. It's dirt cheap, very reliable, and I get several thousand email addresses for whatever domains I want as well as trivial setup for mailing lists.
However, for my outgoing, I use my own VPS. Makes it easy to check logs and see what's going on if there's an error, and it works well with my email program which is Clawsmail. I made sure to get a clean IP to start with though.
I do that. Primary reasons are privacy and dependability. Most "problems" people imagine with self-hosted mail, are way overblown. Hosted on a dedi or two, it just doesn't go down for me, and if it ever does, I know it'll be something I did -- and I know it will be a high priority for the person working on it (again, me) to fix, unlike with mass-scale services where you're nothing but a single account in millions, probably not even paying, and if your mail is lost or the account is locked, nobody is going to care all that much.
See that's the problem, I had to switch to a paid service for the emails at work from self hosted because that was the only way we could get through the Government and Uni email filters. As always, it depends on your usage.
There are no match for Private email servers in terms of security and privacy. That said, hosting your own mailserver is a huge task and not really recommended since there are a lot of additional resources required to managing/scaling said service. Not only do you have to spend time configuring the management software, but it really takes a lot of time and effort understanding the fundamentals of email like Postfix/Dovecot (SMTP/IMAP) services and how to troubleshoot them in case of any issues. Unless you're going with a supported and expensive solution like iRedmail Pro/Zimbra Enterprise all the other open source projects don't guarantee a trouble free management panel/email experience.
Now there's also the more important aspects of running a mailserver like data protection, offsite backups, redundant backup MX/mailservers to queue messages in case of primary server being offline, quality SMTP relays for guaranteed deliverability, outbound/inbound filtration to fight spam/viruses, etc.
Its also worth noting that a VPS/dedicated server cannot be scaled like a cloud email server; to future proof the solution one must consider a scalable solution both in terms of storage and compute resources.
Cloud (private) email servers are a great way to host all your domains/users (unlike 'per user/mo.' shared email services) and the highly scalable architecture with dedicated compute resources and high performance storage clusters guarantees a future proof mail solution. With robust cloud platforms like OpenStack, scalability doesn't have to come with a premium price tag!
There is a big difference between sending and receiving. A postfix setup is not difficult and basically requires next to no maintenance. There is no need to store any mail there either. In over a year I haven't had my mail rejected anywhere. I do think this is a more reliable way to go.
It is in the receiving of mail that the difficulty comes with the setup, particularly if there are a lot of users. For incoming, I do think that @mailcheap is right on the money.
This. If Gmail is too expensive then look at Rackspace Apps - UI is not as good but spam filtering and deliverability are just as good.
For personal email and learning, hosting your own is great. For transactional/business email where consistent inbox delivery counts to all services on a regular basis, well there's my signature below
Everyone should at least try to run their own server (for email or anything else) just to see how hard it really is. Basic email isn't really any harder than basic web hosting. Yes, there might be some scaling issues later on, or deliverability issues early on. If you run into real problems, you can always go with a provider like MXroute and either leave your server as a secondary or abandon it altogether.
I also like the control I have when I run my own server. I have an anti-spam solution that is not cookie-cutter, so it is much easier to set up things when I'm self-hosted. It's also a plus in that it communicates to my provider that I'm not an incompetent doofus; I'm able to run a mail server that neither sends nor receives spam. If you aren't able to do that, that would be one good reason not to self-host.
I rather like hosting my own, personal email. It's definitely more work than a LAMP/LEMP stack to configure, but not too difficult. I value the privacy and have implemented some anti-spam that suits my particular use-case.
A lot of people say its difficult to setup, but really once it's up and running that's about it. If you're hosting other people's mail, then you have to keep an eye out for outbound spam, etc. But otherwise once the software is configured there's very little left.
The first server I connected to the public internet was in 1998 or so. We didn't have a choice for someone else to do email: you did it yourself or you didn't have email. Hosting your own email was rather aggravating even then.
Fast forward 20 years and with the "war on spam", doing it yourself is an exercise in self-mutilation. I run my own mail server, but it took what seemed like months to ensure that everything worked properly and I can send emails without fearing a bounce of some sort. Reverse DNS, SPF, DKIM, SSL certificates, fighting with ISPs, etc. I still can't even send mail to my cell number on T-Mobile. All of this is compounded by the irrefutable fact that every Linux mail server is a shitty mess of configuration options and poor error logging/reporting.
If you've got a working mail server like I do, just keep it going. If you're starting fresh, skip it and go with MXRoute.
Is there a trial available for Mxroute @jarland ?
Just buy it, it's worth it
There is not, but feel free to ask for a refund if you don't like it
Just know that because I use cPanel is not to be taken as a sign that the entire operation is WHMCS+cPanel template company, a lot of work goes into the back end, and a lot of money goes to MailChannels for high quality delivery
I host myself. Purely because why not? I've used MXRoute and well I don't use all it's features so a self hosted on a $9/yr Virmach works
I'm in the "since I have been doing mail servers for years/decades, I keep doing it" camp. At the same time I would suggest if you are new to email servers, go with MXroute. The reasons are endless.
My company decided to go with a 3rd party mailer to prevent possible attacks. That was pretty much the only reason we did it. Although, I will say the 3rd party mailer has many more features than we would have to install or update. That saves us some work for email.
Ask Hillary if it's worth it or not {-)
Obviously, she thought that self-hosting is better than using the official government servers, so I'd guess the same goes for commercial email providers.
+1 for self-hosting if you want to learn:
Postfix, MySQL, Dovecot, Spamassassin, ClamAV, rDNS, backup MX, TLS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, Greylisting, etc.
Well worth the effort imo and knowledge acquired is transferable
p.s. This is a great site for checking your self-hosted mail server's reputation:
https://mail-tester.com/
Don't actually need half of those. Sure if you want to learn you can, but don't pile on tons of "etc" stuff creating an impression a robust and working setup is impossible without a dozen things to keep track of.
Got 9/10 score with the test, with the -1 being for the lack of DKIM.
good point - I started with the basics first, got that working and locked down and added the other layers gradually:
+MySQL to manage multiple domains/users/aliases
+Spamassassin/RBLs/ClamAV for filtering out the garbage
+DKIM/DMARC to improve reputation
ymmv as it does require regular maintenance to keep everything available 24x7
Agreed. A lot of money (250USD) for a million of emails that will hit the inbox. Not sure if I still have an account with you, but it's surely worth the money. Might sign-up one of these days.
I've always hosted my own e-mail. I only use Gmail for miscellaneous things. I've got great deliverability to all major providers and minimal spam (so little it ain't worth mentioning).
Why host it yourself, there is always some nut willing to put in the hours to do it for you, for very little money and you get someone to complain at. @Jarland
This. No need to overcomplicate things at the beginning. Even postfix might be considered overkill; I'm doing just fine with exim.
The only thing not on the list that I'd add is IPv6. Google wouldn't accept my messages until I set it up properly (including rDNS).