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Options for email hosting
Hi all,
I am looking for some direction when it comes to email options for hosting own domain's email on a VPS. As far as I can tell the options are:
1) Self-host MTA and MDA. E.g. sendmail + postfix
2) Use 3rd-party MTA and self-host MDA E.g. Amazon SES?+ postfix
3) Use 3rd-party mail provider (mail doesn't touch the VPS). E.g. Exchange online, ProtonMail
Whilst I have previously (in the distant past) run a public mail server, my research leads me to believe there are a number of pitfalls related to being able to reliably send mail that perhaps weren't as important or didn't exist twenty years ago. This makes self-hosting an MTA seem undesirable to me as I'd prefer my solution to require as 'light touch' administration as possible.
Am I right in assuming that there should be no issues with self-hosting the MDA? In other words, the big email cartel won't refuse to deliver to me because I'm a small fish?
A complete 3rd party solution seems like the easiest option however I am concerned about the limiting factor. Suppose I want to setup some web services - how do I send transactional email if my provider is for a single mailbox? Can I send notifications from e.g. [email protected] (through their SMTP server?)
I suppose I can use a subdomain for transactional email (i.e. [email protected]) but then I probably need a transactional email provider as well to send from that domain.
Bear in mind these aren't going to be high traffic sites, just for myself, my family and development/testing purposes.
Just wondering what the community's thoughts on this are this and whether you have any suggestions or alternatives to what I have laid out.
Comments
I'm using NameCrane for email and it's been pretty good so far, apart from some minor issues in the beginning.
do either 2 or 3
for small scale transactional email with no need for advanced analytics etc I don't think @jar has an issue with that, MXRoute that is
If you need something more corporate, there's always AWS
You can self host email and use either MXRoute or AWS SES for outgoing
Or just use MXRoute as is
Or use AWS WorkMail + AWS SES for transactional
MXRoute has some sending limits so it's probably not perfect for mass emailing (even if legit) but if you're at that stage something like AWS SES is preferable anyway
Thanks for the tip, I'll be sure to check out NameCrane. What sort of minor issues did you have?
I use option 2. Self-hosted Stalwart for inbox with outbound emails delivered by MXRoute.
For some domains I just use NameCrane while for others I use Mailcow on a VPS. Mailcow is pretty awesome, but to avoid deliverability issues I use Mailpace with it.
I tried self-hosting email, but I think it takes way more effort than it's worth. It's not just about sending mail. Filtering out spam can also turn into a real headache. A couple of important messages ended up in the spam folder, and I had to dig them out of the archive three months later.
In my opinion, the best balance is to use a provider to host email for your domain. Zoho offers a free tier (it doesn't include IMAP access, though).
For sending transactional emails directly from your VPS, you can just install mailx and configure it to use Amazon SES. That way, you don't have to worry about limits imposed by your main email host.
Im using namecrane lifetime. No issues with it but I use it for very light use on all my extra domains. My primaries are legacy'd into microsofts old free mail services.
I had some issues setting up with namecrane accounts with Thunderbird, im not really sure why, could be a me thing, that UI is so clunky. All my outbounds get double sent. No issues using outlook client with it though. Tried to get off msft for mail but didnt quite pan out.
Definitely going to check out Namecrane tomorrow as a few people, including yourself, have recommended this host.
namecrane lifetime