My number one product I wish existed is this: A complete email server package that is easy to configure, setup, manage, is secure, and is accepted by other email service providers (gmail, yahoo, etc) out of the box. And with easy I mean as easy as apt-get install or just downloading a binary.
For anyone that has configured email servers, you know it is a headache, this tutorial makes it look easy but its only adressing a a tiny portion of the problem (albiet a important one) - email spoofing. (EDIT: it does mention spam assassin at the end so there's a little bit of info about spam filtering)
YunoHost is a server operating system aiming to make self-hosting accessible to everyone. It is based on Debian GNU/Linux and is fully compatible with it.
Basically YunoHost automatically installs and configures some services around LDAP, and provides tools to administrate them.
It can thus be considered as a distribution, including the following software:
Nginx: a web server
Postfix: an SMTP e-mail server
Dovecot: an IMAP and a POP3 e-mail server
Amavis: an antispam
Metronome: an XMPP server
OpenLDAP
Bind: a DNS server
SSOwat: a Single Sign On (SSO) web authentication system
A backup system (not yet implemeted)
The tricky bit here is "accepted by other email service providers". This depends a lot on the IP you are using, on the reverse DNS, DKIM/SPF settings, your ISP and "neighbours" reputations, RBL listings etc.
It's not just a case of distributing postfix and a nice UI on top. That's what makes email difficult nowadays.
I tried doing this a long time ago, and eventually gave up exactly because of this. I self host a lot of things, but self hosted email has always taken up a disproportionate amount of my time. At some point it's just not worth the headache any more.
I ended up ditching the self hosting route and went with an Exchange Online hosted email subscription at $5 per month and never looked back.
Well, it's not THAT hard. Find a good host with clean IPs, check the IP against RBLs before embarking on running your own email, if it's listed demand a clean IP instead.
It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's far from brain surgery.
Mail-in-a-Box [1] is very well-done, with a clean and modern mail server configuration. However it is not very customisable and requires a dedicated vm.
A VM/VPS running Ubuntu with one GB of RAM to be precise. Had to recreate a droplet when testing it because I only provisioned 512 MB of RAM.
So far, it has done its job quite nicely. Just make sure you don't plan on installing it next to a webserver. Its installer hijacks port 80/443 with its own nginx webserver.
Can I add "mailing list with a decent UI" to the tick list? Something like discourse's UI but with proper mailing list functionality, like Mailman. I know discourse has fairly theoretical mailing list mode but it's atrociously bad...
I can say that configuring opensmtpd is surprisingly easy, comparing to postfix or exim. My config is 13 lines, and it supports dovecot integration, DKIM signing of outbound messages, TLS and authenticated submission. I wish every server has so simple configuration. But that's only SMTP part of mail processing.
I've became a big fan of OpenSMTPD lately, although for two specific use cases. I manage a number of mail systems, some small and some large, and used Postfix exclusively.
Recently, after discovering and playing with OpenSMTPD, I've started replacing Postfix with OpenSMTPD on null mailers and internal relays. My Postfix configuration is pretty much identical on all of those hosts and I've gotten it pretty polished over the years, but there's something about the simplicity of OpenSMTPD that I really like.
I don't envision moving from Postfix anytime soon on my main mail systems (which serve many, many domains and users). If I had a much simpler mail setup I would definitely consider it, though.
Zimbra has packages for Ubuntu and CentOS which are really easy to install and upgrade.
Pros: It provides a good enough webmail, a good (collaborative) calendar, LDAP integration, etc. Configuring SPF, DKIM and https/smtps/imaps was pretty easy (good official wiki docs).
Cons: Since it's a very "industry ready" kind of project, with lots of corporations using it, so the community forums can be very hit or miss. "Community" (free software) downloads are harder to find on their website, and the binary package is a bit annoying to keep up to date (does not use apt/yum).
Overall, I find it sufficiently turn-key and it "just works", while still being based on free software. I also feel comfortable recommending it to clients who want to move away from MS Exchange or Google Apps, since there are lots of Zimbra commercial providers out there who can support it.
ps: Zimbra/mail is not part of my main business focus, I only manage our mail server because I don't like depending on a 3rd-party for something as critical as mail.
Fair point. The web UI and (iirc) imap/pop daemons are Java based. The smtpd is postfix. It also uses MySQL for some of its storage, and OpenLDAP for authentication. On the other hand, it scales well.
There are a few docker boxes which look quite promising, and once you have docker on your system it is actually pretty much as easy as apt-get install. (docker pull / docker run)
we have a pretty easy to use multi-domain mail server in a Debian Wheezy container [1] based on LXC. It's an integrated package with Postfix, Dovecot, a GUI admin (Vimbadmin) and Roundcube webmail preconfigured so you can start with a GUI admin right away and add domains and users. It's like a small head start and works out of the box and there is a comprehensive guide on how to use it and configuring a mail server including a screencast [2], that could be worth exploring.
But the thing with a mail server is there are number of steps beyond installation. You need to configure SSL and spam filtering, then your DNS and SPF records. Then you need to test and ensure your mail is making it through. And a mail server requires constant attention. It's not a configure once and forget. You need to take care of spam filtering, anti virus, and ensuring your mail server is up pretty much 24/7 without break, as email is important and cannot be down. This can become a huge time sink, hence folks leaning towards hosted solutions like Gmail etc which take care of all of that for a small cost.
I work on Virtualmin. I'm glad it works well for you in this role. The mail stack is probably he single most complicated portion of the stuff Virtualmin manages (it certainly has a long dependency list). As the person that maintains some of it, I also wish there were a simpler way! The number of components we have to keep up in order to make it easy is mind blowing...
That said, I'm really surprised at how many mail sending services there are. Sending mail really shouldn't be hard (and it isn't if you understand all the components, but it's still time-consuming enough to be a challenge for many). I am not one of those folks who believes email should be replaced by a whole new thing, but I do think a simplification of the stack would be lovely. How we do that without introducing even more new mail related standards is the conundrum.
Sounds like you know enough about this process where you know it can be a lot of setup and careful maintenance.
So if you don't want to invest the setup and ongoing maintenance time, or get no pleasure from doing such , may I ask why you want a simple way to do all this at all?
Seems like you should just use fastmail or gmail or similar?
Configuring and running smtp isn't supposed to be super easy and fool proof. I think most systems that claim that will leave you with an unmaintained email solution that is likely not very secure and probably not being replicated or backed up, for starters, not mentioning all the actual things that go into making it all work reliably.
So if you don't want to invest the setup and ongoing maintenance time, or get no pleasure from doing such , may I ask why you want a simple way to do all this at all?
I'm not the person you replied to, but among the potential reasons would be privacy, reliability and sustainability.
Yeah, i hear you, but I think that its a bit of a silver bullet, to have a 1 click install that gives you all of these things.
Just the 3 you mentioned here, privacy, reliability and sustainability are not going to happen if you are doing a 1-click install, and don't understand how it works.
correct me if I'm wrong, but as good as haraka looks (and it looks great), it isn't really a "complete package" like the GP was looking for...
From the Manual page[0]:
> Haraka makes no attempt to be a mail store (like Exchange or Postix/Exim/Qmail), a LDA, nor an IMAP server (like Dovecot or Courier). Haraka is typically used with such systems.
For anyone that has configured email servers, you know it is a headache, this tutorial makes it look easy but its only adressing a a tiny portion of the problem (albiet a important one) - email spoofing. (EDIT: it does mention spam assassin at the end so there's a little bit of info about spam filtering)