Hi,
Am evaluating all options for self-hosting my own mailserver. I am probably looking to host it in GCP or AWS, as I don’t want to worry about availability on a really small VM
Would really appreaciate any recommendations from the combined wisdom of this subreddit, on what the most ideal stack to self host would be and any tips to not make any silly security errors.
Would be nice to solve a couple main problems, the main one being, I have older backups in a few different formats, .pst, .olm and .mbox. I want to bring all of these together, in one mail account and have them searchable and syncable to devices.
Is there a mail server that can even import all these formats?
I know email clients can import but I’ve never imported into a server. I’m guessing I could import into a local client then sync to the server somehow?
Did have it so that these mailboxes were imported on one of my PCs in Thunderbird. Oh my god was that awful, the search is absolutely shocking and most of the time, when you need to find an old email you are not at home, sat by the desktop computer.
Am really looking for something with a somewhat decent Web mail interface, I use webmail alot right now. Doesn’t have to be Gmail level smooth, but more than anything I just want search to be good. Fast, presented well and accurate/smart.
Came across AnonAddy Source Code which seems like such an amazing idea that I’ve never come across before, so would love to integrate that into the solution. If anyone is aware of incompatibility between this and certain self host servers would appreaciate the heads up
Not too sure about spam-filters and email AVs. I’m not too clued up on that, obviously I would like to avoid spam and that anonaddy thing might go a long way but if the mail server just has basic rules and sweep features that would be good enough.
Not too worried about the privacy / encryption focus I’ve seen on some self-hosted mailservers. Moving to my own mail server must be somewhat better than what ms/google are harvesting from me data wise at the moment. Even if it is in their cloud.
What is everyone’s experience of these?:
Also is there any mileage in running the web mail client separately? Do they have better search and UX than any of the built in ones?
Thanks in advance
Have a look at mailcow if you’re new to MTA’s. Use that and a (sub)domain to figure out how to set things up. Once youre satisfied with the setup, reconfigure your domain on the new MTA. Use a mailclient with $yourformat and imap support to import your old email.
And above all, dont be discouraged by the naysayers that think its an impossible task; Its not, but it is complicated to get right bc all the parts involved ;-)
Appreciate the straightforward advice here. I think some people have taken it that I have a burning desire to host email for day to day use but seems like you got it.
Am more looking for something I guess you could describe as an “email archive”. Do you think this is the only way to get what I’m looking for? All these old emails, making them searchable / syncable to different devices with someway of like periodically importing new batches to them?