cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/3212910
Hi all,
I have had several shots at self hosting email over the years and my last attempt failed due to my home IP being in a dynamic pool. I thought I might try again, this time with a basic web hosting provider that I could set up email on. Any suggestions for a free/cheap provider with decent uptime?
Thanks
I hate to say this but even for dedicated self hosters it’s almost never worth it to self host email, either at home or hosted on some rented server or via some IP tunnels.
The reason being is that even after you set up DKIM and SPF and DMARC perfectly you will still need to fight to keep your IPs off of spam lists.
It’s somewhat doable but at the cost of:
- Your email being unreliable and not making it to the destination inbox, AND you not knowing if it went to spam or the inbox.
- You will need to dedicate a few hours a week to appeal and scan spam lists for your IP.
If anyone in the /16 that your IP lives in sends spam you get re added to the list.
Self hosting email is almost never worth it. I self host everything except for email and maps. Those two just are not worth it.
I can’t recommend Migadu enough.
💯 Agree. Don’t self-host email.
The most important thing, if you intend to do outgoing email, is to get a reputable hosting service, where you’d have few/none bad neighbours. Unfortunately that often doesn’t come together with cheap, as cheap solutions often attract a certain clientele. I’ve also had more luck with slightly smaller (but still reputable) providers, i.e stay away from OVH / Hetzner and the like. If you want something cheap, it’d probably not be a good experience to self-host.
With my self hosted solution I have no concerns about deliverability, and only very few occasions had blacklisting issues (due to neighbours in the /16 range).
Get a static IP and host yourself? Hurricane electric offers free IPv6, so you can get a static IPv6 address for your mail host
Tunnel broker blocks port 25 by default, but you can ask nicely and they’ll open it for you. It’s a good option if you don’t have an IPv6 address otherwise.
Having an IPv6 only mail server is potentially risky, though… some other mail servers may only talk IPv4.
Free/cheap VPS are a lot more likely to have their IPs blacklisted for email, due to being used for spam.
The recommendation to use a reputable email provider host is much better, but if you want to go it yourself the Google Cloud free tier includes an instance with a public IP address. Snapshots are not included in the free tier or any other backup, so use at your own risk - this besides the complexity of email security.
