

Set up your own email server in 5 steps - regularfry
http://forum.bytemark.co.uk/t/set-up-your-own-email-server-in-5-steps/1864

======
lifeofanalysis
Setting up an email server is a non-trivial task. I am in a rush right now so
I can write a more detailed response. But I hope others will chime in and
provide some links to support my argument.

Curiously, this topic comes up every few days and we don't seem to have made
any progress towards a good self-hosted email solution in the last 10-15
years. This is a start-up idea waiting to be implemented well; and for
substantial profit, I might add.

~~~
jiggy2011
Setting up the software is the easy part, making sure that you have good
deliverability by keeping your IPs and domains off blacklists and not being
filtered is the hard part.

~~~
old-gregg
See, _that_ part can be outsourced: just configure your outbound SMTP to relay
via deliverability companies like Mailgun or Mandril, for personal use the
cost is $0.

It's easy, see: [http://documentation.mailgun.com/user_manual.html#smtp-
relay](http://documentation.mailgun.com/user_manual.html#smtp-relay)

The reason one might want to use his own email server is - I suspect because
of Snowden story - security: you control your own email archive and possibly
encryption. The delivery will have to happen over the open Internet anyway, so
why not just relay to a 3rd party from the start.

Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder of Mailgun.

~~~
giovannibajo1
That fixes half of the story; the other half is inbound spam filtering (with
all the RBL, greylist, spamassassin dance). I then prefer an unique solution
such as [http://mailroute.net](http://mailroute.net) that handles both inbound
and outbound.

PS: mailgun is really great, i'm a happy user

------
FigBug
It doesn't really go into what Symbiosis is. Is it something I can install on
my linux distribution. Or do I have to use their Symbiosis distribution?

Setting up email is a world of pain, anything to make it easier would be good.

~~~
mattbee
[http://symbiosis.bytemark.co.uk/](http://symbiosis.bytemark.co.uk/) \- a set
of packages to install on top of Debian to automatically manage vhosts and
email domains, so you just create & delete files and directories rather than
edit configuration files.

It's the default setup for Bytemark customers and we've seen some of them take
it to other ISPs, so we know it's portable.

------
asb
So people are immediately going to chime in about what a pain ensuring good
deliverability is. What always gets me is why all these "set up your own email
server" guides are so all or nothing. It would seem rather more pragmatic to
receive email on your own server, but to outsource sending to Mailgun/Amazon
SES/Mandrill/whoever. Then you only have spam filtering to worry about...

------
breakall
Generating more interest in the concept of running your own mail server is a
great thing. The four part Ars Technica series on the topic [1] is the best
and most comprehensive guide to setting up a mail server.

I think a more hands on approach is going to serve the amateur mail server
admin better. I know I feel more confident about running my own mail server
since I configured many of the components manually -- this puts me on much
better footing to troubleshoot when something inevitably goes wrong.

The "five steps" in the link do not include spam or AV protection either, and
trivializes the process of installing and configuring them.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-
to...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/how-to-run-your-
own-e-mail-server-with-your-own-domain-part-1/)

------
moepstar
Really? They introduce their setup with "If you're going to wean yourself off
Gmail, then you need usable webmail" and a few paragraphs down they're talking
about SquirrelMail?

I can see Roundcube being an alternative but SquirrelMail makes me just sad
when i look at it..

------
pbhjpbhj
cf. "How to set up a mail server on a GNU / Linux system",
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748670](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748670)
(and probably many other threads too). There are several recipes in that
thread; of course there's the thread OP too "Ubuntu + Postfix + Courier IMAP +
MySQL + Amavisd-new + SpamAssassin + ClamAV + SASL + TLS + Roundcube +
Postgrey "!!

~~~
marcosdumay
Good thing that you just tell Ubuntu "get me Postfix and Courier", and you
alredy have a functional server that you can put extra stuff as needed.

------
wch
I found ages ago that setting up a mail server isn't super hard. What was
difficult keeping it running reliably. Every time I would go on a trip, I'd
worry that it would break down and I wouldn't be able to fix it. And I always
worried that it was rejecting or spam-filtering mail that was important.

~~~
zheshishei
I'm not sure if this would work in practice, but wouldn't it be a possibility
to forward any rejected emails to a gmail account?

------
erikb
The question is a good one: How to easily set up a mail server. But the answer
seems to be completely bundled with a product (although it says in the intro
it wouldn't be like that). That's not the droid we are looking for.

~~~
regularfry
It's not bundled at all - it's just a bunch of packages on top of Debian. It
just happens to be available preinstalled as an install image on BigV.

------
spiritplumber
Good stuff! I'll give it a try.

