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Mail-in-a-Box
Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.
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I've been running my own email server for around 7-8 years and just setup a new email server on a DigitalOcean vps earlier this year using "Mail-in-a-Box".
That's about as easy as it gets but it still requires some work and you need to check the IP address DigitalOcean issues to see if it's blacklisted before you set it up.
Google makes it easy to get whitelisted. Microsoft email services (Hotmail/Outlook) are a pain though. I tried to get through their process but got nowhere. Other services I had to submit a request to get de-listed. So it does take awhile to go through all that.
Still, I prefer that to hitching that wagon to a 3rd party provider like Google, or any other.
Before I set mine up the 1st time I'd been screwed a few times by 3rd party providers. The last one, I can't recall which, but it was either "MailChimp" or whomever bought them, that I'd configured an app to use and almost as soon as I'd released it they announce they'd been acquired and I would have to use the new services APIs, and of course they cost more, and their services were geared towards mass mailing, and that's not what my apps do, and their API sucked for my needs.
It was about 12 years of dealing with 3rd party bullshit that motivated me to set up my own email server.
If you just want to fiddle around with one to get a feel for it Mail-in-a-Box is a good place to get started: https://mailinabox.email/
As someone who run my own email server, I obviously disagree. Three things come to my mind:
First, SPAM filter is way overrated. I have next to zero SPAM filter, and am doing just fine. Yes, I got lots of SPAMs, but the volume of real SPAMs is dwarfed by the volume of ads that would pass through SPAM filters anyway, so why bother.
Second, yes, open source webmail is lacking, that's why I wrote mine: https://github.com/derek-zhou/liv
Lastly, the biggest pain I have is sending email to big providers such as gmail. I have everything setup correctly, DMARC, SPF, you name it. And my server is not on any block list that I can find, and yet they put my emails in the SPAM folder from time to time. In the name of fighting SPAM, they are sabotaging the original internet experience for everyone.
Related posts
- Mail-in-a-Box – Take back control of your email
- Ask HN: Self Hosting an Email Server?
- Small business owner: considering signi g up to Microsoft Office Premium for mail etc.
- Mail-in-a-Box: a mail server in a box
- mailinabox: Mail-in-a-Box helps individuals take back control of their email by defining a one-click, easy-to-deploy SMTP+everything else server: a mail server in a box.