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After years of self-hosting I finally switched to https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com and I'm much happier for it. Self-hosting is still possible now
by corv 9y ago
After years of self-hosting I finally switched to https://protonmail.com https://protonmail.com and I'm much happier for it.
Self-hosting is still possible nowadays but email delivery is an uphill battle. You can expect to write several major email providers to remove you from their blacklists even if your address and domain reputation is good.
VPS privacy and security is questionable and dedicated servers are usually expensive. Hosting SMTP from home is virtually impossible without a VPN to a "proper" IP.
Are you willing to spend the time to update all parts of your infrastructure on a regular basis? Are you certain you will keep up to date on recommended ciphers and protocols?
How is your data going to be secured at rest? If it's encrypted, how are you going to provide the keys during unexpected reboots?
If you want push notifications, synchronized calendars, contacts and notes you will need to add another layer of complexity to your setup.
Critics of Protonmail and similar will point out that browser based encryption is a weakness, however that doesn't change the fact that it is a major step in the right direction. The battle for privacy is fought in depth, not absolutes.
Protonmail is hosted in a Swiss datacenter, run by a Swiss company under strict data protection laws. They offer a free tier and a paid one for your own domains.
If you still want to go the self hosted route iRedMail and Mailinabox both work well. Sovereign runs too many services - it should really be split into VMs or containers.
- mycloud 9y agoI can second this. I used to selfhost mail and it was a lot of work to keep up. Nowadays I am also quite happy with protonmail but since I got cloudron installed for other services, I just enabled mail there and will see how that goes over the next few months, so far so good. Hopefully I can go back to email selfhosting through that in the long run. Also I agree, the privacy implications when using a VPS is still something worth taken into account.