this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Email server hosting (lemmy.brennoflavio.com.br)
submitted 1 year ago by brenno@lemmy.brennoflavio.com.br to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I'm exploring some options to see if it's viable to self host my email account. Currently I have:

  • A home server that I can host the entire email stack but I cannot open the SMTP port there
  • An AWS account where I can create a VM with SMTP ports open to the internet and reverse DNS support, also I have a domain and AWS SES configured and approved to send emails

Ideally I would want to send and receive from my home server, but that is not possible, so I'm exploring some alternatives:

For receiving emails:

  • Cheap VM with postfix and my home server with dovecot, essentially forwarding all emails to my home server where I want them to be. I don't know if this setup works tho.

  • Keep everything in a VM, with the downside that I'll need to do extra work there as it will have all my data. If possible I don't want to go that route.

For sending emails:

  • Sending from the same VM receiving emails, and have everything managed

  • Use AWS SES to send emails in my behalf

Any input or opinion is appreciated. I'm currently exploring options, I haven't made any decisions, so if you have a better alternative feel fee to share.

Thanks!

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[–] remotelove@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I will echo many others here: It's going to be rough getting good deliveries. While you are planning on running a proxy, that is basically the same as running an open port where your server is. While it may seem to be a good idea to send email from a random AWS address, it really isn't. Unless you are behind an IP that is specifically trusted as an email source, your traffic has a higher probability of getting dropped. (Many dynamic IP ranges for home internet connections are marked as invalid or untrusted sources, btw.)

Additionally, email servers are a hot commodity, especially if they are not blocked (yet) by the larger filter providers. All it takes is one or two reports or a poorly configured firewall/IDS to auto-trigger a submission of your IP address as "bad". By hot commodity, I mean you are going to get fuck tons of vulnerability scans. It's not the end of the world, but it's super annoying.

If I was operating as a Jr. Security Analyst again and saw and sus traffic coming from your address, I would submit a block and not think twice about it. Hell, most of those types of blocks are automated anyway.

However, if you do set one up and all is golden, great! It's worth the experience but something I won't ever do again. (Yes I did run my own email server before.)

[–] brenno@lemmy.brennoflavio.com.br 2 points 1 year ago

If I send emails using AWS SES SMTP endpoint that should not happen correct? Receiving email is not affected by bad reputation I suppose