28 ms·

Helm: Personal Email Server

• asprouse 8y ago
  What happens when there is a power or ISP outage?
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    You don't have independent redundant internet connections and reliable backup power at your home?
    • rataata_jr 8y ago
      Redundant internet connections? Oh, come on!
    • fred_is_fred 8y ago
      I suspect everyone here has at least multiple redundant internet connections if they have a cell phone.
      • dragonwriter 8y ago
        While I have a cellphone, and can and do use it as a hotspot, I wouldn't exactly say it could provide a fallback connection for a server in my home, because it usually spends a significant part of the day out of WiFi reach of my home.
  • ranger207 8y ago
    Most email servers are set up to resend automatically for a while, potentially for a couple of days.
  • shock 8y ago
    MTAs will retry delivery for up to a week. There are other options for more advanced usage though, e.g. one can configure multiple mail servers with different priorities, `the helm` having the highest priority and if it's down a MTA would try the next mail server which could be just a forwarder like mailgun.
  • aeden 8y ago
    They have a sort of FAQ on their shop page that provides info about this: https://thehelm.com/pages/shop https://thehelm.com/pages/shop See under the question: What happens to my email if my power or Internet service goes out?
    • asprouse 8y ago
      Odd that they hide their FAQ in the shop page and hidden below the fold on a 13" screen. I looked everywhere but there. You'd think you most customers would want their questions answered before buying.
  • dmoreno 8y ago
    Email has several retries. Something like 6hr, 1day, 2days... After that the sender receives a delivery error. All that is managed by the SMTP servers and the numbers change, but normally just losing internet connection or power for some hours doesnt make emails dissapear. By design.
• keehun 8y ago
  Interesting product with great potential. Their website doesn't seem to address my two main concerns: 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft? 2. How would the product work in case Helm the company/service goes away (or even just service outage)? Can the device work on its own without the need for their web service (perhaps with lower delivery rate/higher spam score)? They claim: >> We’ve designed your Helm to ensure as little information about you as possible is communicated back to us. That’s why the only account you create is directly with your server, not with us, and why only encrypted data passes through our servers. But how does that work with sending emails? (Please excuse my ignorance on this matter.)
  • rataata_jr 8y ago
    There are very good open source projects, namely rspamd etc.
    • Hello71 8y ago
      That helps check that you don't receive spam (and even so, rspamd is much weaker when applied to only one account). It doesn't fix sending other people what looks like spam.
      • bigiain 8y ago
        I recall one of the major bulk mail services (perhaps Campaign Monitor?) has a service where you can feed your intended outbound mail into a large range of spam checking services before you send it, to alert you to problems in your mail that are likely to trigger spam filters. (On the other side of that problem though, if my email account starts sending mail "what looks like spam", it's almost certainly because my account's been compromised and is actually sending spam. There's a _start_ difference between typical personal person-to-person email and spam. I suspect _some_ business email might blur the line there - but part of me thinks if your business email is blurring the line about being "spammy", then it deserves to get filtered...)
  • wpietri 8y ago
• dhruvmittal 8y ago
  The hardware looks slick, but are my emails going to bounce when my not commercial comcast/spectrum/at&t/whoever has a maintenance outage? I'm not sure it's too useful to bring that out of the datacenter and into my house...
  • Arubis 8y ago
    Most SMTP hosts will automatically retry a few times at spaced intervals if they can’t reach their destination host in first attempt.
    • zachruss92 8y ago
      Yea, they will retry for 48 hours before a message is marked as undeliverable.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Hey there, I'm Giri Sreenivas, co-founder of Helm. Glad you like the hardware! Good question on email bounces. As Arubis mentioned, email has retry built in and most servers default to retrying for 48-72 hours.
    • jstanley 8y ago
      This answer implies that you have no idea what the problem is, which doesn't bode well. The problem is that the major email hosts send to the spam folder any emails from IP addresses they don't explicitly trust. My solution to this is just to ignore it and tell people if they want to receive my email they should work out how, as the problem is on their end not mine. But lots of your customers won't like that answer.
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        hi jstanley - I was answering the question about retry when there's a service outage. Did you interpret the question differently?
• jawns 8y ago
  Don't most ISPs ban residential accounts from running something like this? Comcast terms: > use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, email, web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers Verizon terms: > You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. AT&T terms: > using such account for the purpose of operating a server of any type; Sources: https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspeedinternetaup https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspe... https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-online https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-onlin... https://www.att.com/legal/terms.aup.html https://www.att.com/legal/terms.aup.html
  • fyfy18 8y ago
    It's not necesarily banned, but very often port 25 will be blocked. Additionally it's pretty likely your email will be marked as spam if it comes from a residential IP. They must have thought about this though, so maybe they have their own SMTP servers that emails go through.
    • erinnh 8y ago
      Apparently so: "Helm connects securely to a unique gateway, which is assigned a static IP address so Helm is reachable by other mail servers and secure TLS sessions can be established." Which I dont see the point of then. That way they are your gatekeeper of your mail/files etc. Not much of an improvement.
      • icebraining 8y ago
        Agreed. I don't see how this is any different from a regular email server, with a local client that pulls emails over IMAP and deletes them remotely.
  • 8y ago
• alexkavon 8y ago
  How hackable is this I wonder? Would just be cool to have a machine this shape. Of course you could probably do the same with a raspberry pi and a 3D printer.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Alex - Giri Sreenivas, co-founder of Helm here. We've designed security from the silicon up to make this device very difficult to hack. That means implementing secure boot, full disk encryption and utilizing a Secure Enclave for managing keys on the device. And yes, you could definitely do this on a raspberry pi. That's what we used to prototype. It's not great for a long last, durable and secure platform though.
    • jstanley 8y ago
      Sorry... you designed your own ICs for this? That is a big claim. If that's not what you mean, what does "from the silicon up" mean?
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        Sorry if that wasn't clear. We did not design our own ICs. We selected an SoC for its security capabilities and designed our solution to utilize it integrated with our firmware. We're using an SoC from NXP.
    • q3k 8y ago
      Fairly sure parent meant 'hackable' in the good sense of the word - ie. repurpose the hardware for your own uses and have root on it.
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        good point - I read it with the other connotation in mind. We plan to make a developer program available in the future. Stay tuned!
• lwf 8y ago
  They're "solving" the residential ISP email blacklist issue by offering an IPSEC VPN with static addresses they control: > Helm just works with your home network—no configuration needed. Helm connects securely to a unique gateway, which is assigned a static IP address so Helm is reachable by other mail servers and secure TLS sessions can be established. A nice approach, but it does sort of chip away at the decentralisation claim that's at the core of their messaging.
  • plopz 8y ago
    I wonder if they check that the IP addrs they use are in good standing with the large mail receivers or if they somehow pre-warm the IP with "good" email.
• _verandaguy 8y ago
  This looks really interesting, but I'm disappointed that you apparently _need_ a subscription to their DDNS-like service. In a lot of cases, users may be paying for a static IP from their ISPs (or even have one for free, by default), or they may be running their own DDNS via a cloud instance already. This does nothing but add a $100/year fee for something that is exceptionally non-reusable and narrowly-scoped.
  • qwertay 8y ago
    I host my email on a vps for $2.50/month. At that price there is really no reason to do it at home.
• bachmeier 8y ago
  $99/year? They are targeting an extremely small market. I can get Fastmail for a fraction of that amount, and I don't see much of an advantage with this - and I'm one of the few willing to pay for something I get elsewhere for free.
  • heavenlyhash 8y ago
    I mean, "a fraction" is "half" in this case, which is actually pretty close to par in my mind. And that's what I pay for one address for a year; so if this is more addresses and more domains at better scaling prices, that's quite interesting.
    • bachmeier 8y ago
      > "a fraction" is "half" in this case, which is actually pretty close to par in my mind ??! No, half is half. Strange response. It's $50/year, and the $50/year charged by Fastmail is already quite steep for email.
    • ryandrake 8y ago
      I pay ~$5/mo for a VPS that I have root on and host E-mail for an unlimited number of domains, plus I can use it for other purposes: light duty web site, VPN, etc. I don’t seem to be the target market for this but I wish them well—we need more effort towards re-decentralizing E-mail.
    • xienze 8y ago
      Fastmail lets you use all the domains you want with one account, it just routes the messages to a different folder. Also, remember the $99 per year is AFTER shelling out $500 for the device.
      • cycop 8y ago
        Until the device fails and you need to replace.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
• stevehawk 8y ago
  I feel like I'm the target market for this as I pay for Fastmail .. 1 - how many domains can I use? I currently use ~6 with my Fastmail account 2 - can I have multiple users? I recognize that fastmail doesn't let me but at this price point I would want it. It looks like you support that but I'm unsure. 3 - How do you convince my ISP to let me receive traffic on the ports required to run a mail server? (most firewall them on residential accounts) 4 - If I were this committed to my email, why wouldn't I just set it up for free myself? This is actually my biggest question in regards to the product/target market. Are there that many people out there that both care about how email works to this degree and aren't willing to host their own? The website is heavy on theatrics and bold statements but I feel actually kind of lacking in terms of the meat. There's more than a few parts made it difficult for me to get any information at all (the automatic slide show on the Product page, the 'see the inside' slideshow on the tech page). If I had to guess I'd say this site wasn't tested against Firefox (doesn't seem that any are anymore due to its low market sharE).
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    hey stevehawk - thanks for your questions. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Helm. Let me take them one by one: 1 - how many domains can I use? Each Helm Personal Server currently supports 1 domain 2 - Can I have multiple users? Yes, we have no limits on the number of users. 3 - Please see my response above about how we navigate around ISPs blocking ports. We route traffic through an EC2 instance with an iptables configuration and an outbound VPN connection. We utilize Let's Encrypt certs for this traffic to be encrypted with TLS. 4 - I've run my own email server for 15 years. It's a pain and more and more people are willing to pay for convenience and peace of mind that comes from a dedicated team like ours looking out for them. On the meat - we have a post coming tomorrow that is the first in a series where we will dive into the technology. Regarding Firefox issues, please email me at giri@thehelm.com and we'll look into it. We have avid Firefox users on our team and did test it but may have missed some things. Thanks for your questions and let me know if I can answer any more.
    • hawski 8y ago
      Your setup with Let's encrypt certificates is exactly what I was thinking about. I was thinking however about a one step further. Put the server on a smartphone. This way you're pretty much covered most of the time. Also one could be notified as soon as email is incoming. I thought also about a home server that would be used as a secondary. It would be best to give ability to create random subdomains, so a user can have a separate addresses for everyone. Then it would be easy to filter out spam on the proxy level. Which is crucial for a server on a mobile phone.
• pacuna 8y ago
  Even if you dislike the idea or the price, you should be happy there are companies trying to change what has become a real privacy problem these days. At least for me, it gives me hope to think people out there are working on these issues and trying new approaches with new technology.
• TrueDuality 8y ago
  You mention that you use a hardened Linux OS, but you don't discuss any of the other opensource software that you use. While you technically only have to distribute the sources to the people that receive your hardware, it would be nice to know these kinds of things before purchasing. This is a niche market you're marketing to that has a history of researching these kinds of things. Are you using a custom distro or one of the off the shelf ones? What webserver (presumably there is one) is running on this? MTA? What're you using for backups? Is this just a ownCloud running under the hood with a tunnel to AWS and small proprietary layer on top? Along different lines, how to do the backups work? Are they just stored on the device (what happens when its drive dies)? If not where are they stored and how much manual intervention is required. If your company goes under can I use any opensource software to decrypt the backups and access my emails? Edit: With the list of sources in hand I can answer a lot of the questions I posited. So for others interested: Distro: Still unknown, but see additional interesting tidbits. Webserver: Neither nginx or apache are present. If I had to guess its using golang's net code to run any webserver / API that is present MTA: postfix, dovecot, opendkim, opendmarc, spamassassin (might be more components I missed) ownCloud: Doesn't appear so backup software: Duplicity backup location / process: Unknown Interesting other tidbits: OpenVPN is present, and so is ipsec-tools/strongswan. So they might be using either IPSec, OpenVPN or a combination of both for the tunnels. They could just be distribution defaults. It's running docker, I'm guessing they're using some form of container image sync update system rather than a proper package manager. It contains a fully developer toolchain, so presumably this is a full distribution rather than a minimized / custom one. Based on the versions it appears the ARM processor is a QorIQ variant which is an ARM evolution of the PowerPC architecture. Contains the libatomic libraries, so perhaps this is running on Fedora Atomic as an underlying OS? Would explain the presence of docker and give an idea how they're providing updates. Appears to have a wifi chip (I couldn't find any information about connectivity on their site). Specifically it seems to be using a Qualcomm ath10k chip.
  • openbasic 8y ago
    https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files.thehelm.com/legal/Helm+Attribution.pdf https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files.thehelm.com/legal/H...
• devilmoon 8y ago
  Am I missing something or is 500$ an awful lot for an email server? You could probably set up a personal e-mail server with a Raspberry and have more or less the same functionalities.
• ArtWomb 8y ago
  Related story just popped up on Bloomberg: A majority of board members are still using personal email accounts to share corporate information https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/dusty-prodigy-accounts-lost-tablets-put-company-secrets-at-risk https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/dusty-pro...
  • WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    How do you think I make my money at my job? Tag a few high level corp accounts and play the market as deals are closed over gmail accounts. +17% on Twilio buying Sendmail just this month :)
• hknd 8y ago
  Looks quite cool but why put a server into my flat? :thinking: If I'm somewhere and my internet goes down, I will lose access to everything. And as we all know, stuff will go down at some point (probably at the most inconvenient time).
• tpetry 8y ago
  One of the worst ideas. Every big email provider (gmail, yahoo, outlook ...) do block every mail sent from a home isp. so you will not be able to send anyone a mail.
  • tathougies 8y ago
    Very ignorant response. It's fairly straightforward to set up SPF for a new domain, and most big emails will follow these policies.
    • Taranli_Maren 8y ago
      SPF won't help if the spam filter blocks residential addresses outright, which is commonly done using DNSBLs.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Hi tpetry - Giri Sreenivas, co-founder and CEO of Helm here. You raise an important issue with residential IP addresses not being trusted by email senders. This is why we use a static IP address assigned to a gateway for each customer. The Helm Server appears to have this IP when communicating with other email servers. This also allows us to define reverse DNS for a domain which is another marker of trust for email servers.
• apo 8y ago
  Helm just works with your home network—no configuration needed. Helm connects securely to a unique gateway, which is assigned a static IP address so Helm is reachable by other mail servers and secure TLS sessions can be established. This sounds like Helm becomes the email gateway. Sure, an email server might be running on the device, but emails will be routed through Helm the company. Am I missing something?
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Hi apo - Giri Sreenivas, co-founder and CEO of Helm here. The gateway funnels packets to and from the Helm servers in people's homes. These are packets of encrypted TLS sessions so we can't do anything with this traffic. Happy to answer any further questions or concerns.
    • Taranli_Maren 8y ago
      That is not entirely true. Perhaps in the stated configuration it is, but since the domain points to the EC2 instance, you could always register a new LetsEncrypt certificate for it, and do a silent MITM. Perhaps the architecture you describe is the best, however I would hope for two things to be supported: 1) The ability to run your own gateway server instead of having to trust one managed by your company. 2) The ability to disable the gateway entirely if you happen to have a business connection already.
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        It's possible but not something we would ever do. We are looking at STARTTLS Everywhere from EFF as means to help ensure that any cert changes would be tracked transparently. #1 is something we will support via open source.
        • jakejarvis 8y ago
          If running our own gateway server on a cloud provider of our choosing will really be an option, that might sell this for me. Would that remove the yearly $99 requirement? I understand we wouldn’t get support for a lot of the things you handle transparently behind the scenes blacklist/DNS-wise.
• canthonytucci 8y ago
  This looks pretty cool. Very happy to see email space still being explored. Somewhat off topic, but another nice project named Helm is the Helm Synth by Matt Tytel, which is open source and sounds pretty freakin good! https://tytel.org/helm/ https://tytel.org/helm/
  • snazz 8y ago
    And then there’s the Emacs plugin by the same name—there’s a lot of things called Helm.
  • Legogris 8y ago
    For devops/ops/cloud folks, Helm the k8s package manager will be the first thing that comes to mind. https://github.com/helm/helm https://github.com/helm/helm
• vvilliam0 8y ago
  This is a market cash grab that preys on peoples' ignorance and fears. Fancy looking hardware for an excessive cost that isn't stand-alone. For e-mail. Really?
  • kirillzubovsky 8y ago
    I know the founders and can confidently say this is anything but a cash grab. They don’t andvertise this fact, but the guys are really into privacy, and they want to see this come to life for the sake of data protection. VC funding is the means to make it a reality, as good hardware is expensive and takes time to get right.
    • trendia 8y ago
      > as good hardware is expensive They don't need to sell hardware to achieve what they're doing. In the current form, they are mainly selling a service (SMTP relay on EC2) disguised as hardware (imx board inside a fancy box). Why not charge the service for $100/year and allow anyone to use a Raspberry Pi and USB flash drive, which costs $35+$20? If they're using Linux on an imx, then there's likely little difficulty in porting to Raspberry Pi.
      • kirillzubovsky 8y ago
        If I understand what you are asking correctly, then you are not wrong, and there's definitely an option to do this, but you are not the customer they are looking for. If you have the chops to get a Rpi running, then you probably know how to run a mail server or you are definitely able to read an EXIM book and get it going on EC2 in a day... with all the consequences. On the other hand, if you are a business professional, or a crypto holder, or a privacy concerned mom, you don't have the time and chops to go through the setup. What you want is an "iPhone for email", and this is what Helm will provide. One device, simple setup, no hassle, all updates and management are taken care for you. It's beautiful, and $99/y isn't going to sway you. I pay $100/m for Comcast and get subpar internet in return, but I am not going to go and setup an ISP to save money. That said, if you think this is a good idea but could be done at $100/y sub on a Pi, perhaps is a great time to start a competing service ;)
• kachurovskiy 8y ago
  I wish them all the best but I don't know a single person in the market for this. For geeks, programmers and DIY folks it's overpriced, for the casual user the benefits are questionable - you're switching from a proven, free blackbox (GMail) to an unproved, paid blackbox. It's a tough market to enter, I guess.
• framebit 8y ago
  That's a heck of a name conflict with https://helm.sh/ https://helm.sh/ although I suppose the target audiences are fairly different.
• andr 8y ago
  I never understand why people think having your files physically in their homes is somehow more secure than a data center. - You run the risk of hardware failure, which would take days to recover. When your warranty expires, it'd cost you, too. - Disk failure may lose all your data. - Fire, theft, or hurricanes may destroy it. - You still give access to your data to a company, which controls software updates and the EC2 proxy (in this case). - Many home ISPs have shitty upload connectivity, so your email won't work that well on the go. - Internet and power outages mean you won't send or receive any email. - You lose the knowledge email providers get from scale, including ever-evolving spam filters, and a guaranteed clean outgoing IP. If you really want to control your data, just spin up something like ownCloud (not sure if that's the best solution, just an example). Companies like DigitalOcean make it as simple as point and click.
  • qwertay 8y ago
    I think just about every internet connection can run email just fine.
    • icedchai 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Incoming email: port 25 is blocked on many residential connections. Outgoing email: If you send email from a residential IP block you're likely going to be flagged as spam.
      • lvh 8y ago
        If I understand correctly, incoming e-mail actually goes to some EC2 host.
        • icedchai 8y ago
          With this service, yes. That is because not every internet connection can actually successfully run an email server, which proves my point...
          • 8y ago
• have_faith 8y ago
  On the homepage > Do you know where your email is? You show, Google, NSA, etc... but doesn't this service route email through your own servers to get to the box in my home? what makes your servers more secure than Google's at handling the emails? If I have to trust you to route the emails, I might as well just use something like Fastmail that hosts them too. More crucially, what can I do with the box if I ever stop paying you? or you go under, etc.
• jatsign 8y ago
  Honest question - What's up with that form factor? Seems designed to take up more space than necessary. Is there some reason for it or was it just an aesthetic choice?
  • calcifer 8y ago
    They say the units will be stackable to increase storage capacity. The form factor seems suitable to that. Seems like it would also allow airflow on the bottom side without visible vents.
• freen 8y ago
  Try https://mailinabox.email https://mailinabox.email It's rad, does all of the DNS/SSL/DKIM foo necessary to make your email fully deliverable, includes contacts and calendar sync, is multi-user, multi-domain, etc.
  • freen 8y ago
    Or, if you want something a bit more, well, everything and the kitchen sink: https://yunohost.org https://yunohost.org
    • freen 8y ago
      Or Homebox: https://github.com/progmaticltd/homebox https://github.com/progmaticltd/homebox Ansible, yaml config, I think only a single domain.
      • TrueDuality 8y ago
        Now this is interesting... Appreciate it
        • the_common_man 8y ago
          Or https://www.iredmail.org/ https://www.iredmail.org/ or https://cloudron.io https://cloudron.io and https://mailcow.email/ https://mailcow.email/
          • freen 8y ago
            Cloudron.io is closed source and hosted, I believe. Mailcow only does smtp and pop/imap, no dns, CardDAV and CalDAV. Iredmail looks neat! Thanks!
            • the_common_man 8y ago
              It's not hosted - you install it on your server. https://cloudron.io/get.html https://cloudron.io/get.html. Why is closed source an issue? gmail, helm etc are all closed...
• dabei 8y ago
  How does this work for mobile? Most of my emails are read on the phone, outside of home.
• wyldfire 8y ago
  > While offline, emails sent to you will not be delivered. This does not, however, mean that they are lost. ... the sender’s email server will periodically retry sending the email at a later time. It could be interesting to see whether MTAs evolve away from that design feature/constraint. Email seems ever-more centralized. Then again, it's a great robustness feature with a very small downside if any, so hopefully it's just my paranoia.
• kapauldo 8y ago
  Love this idea, is there a business version?
• BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
  I would never invest in anything like this because we should all be making strides to kill email not make it better or owning it or building services around 40 year old tech.
  • adtac 8y ago
    What's wrong with email?
  • Aeolun 8y ago
    What else should we use? The letter paradigm is fairly universal.
  • pmoriarty 8y ago
    People have been trying to kill email for 40 years and failing. Their reinventions are usually worse than what they're trying to replace. Unix, vim, emacs, lisp, the shell, and even the web itself is all old tech at this point. Old doesn't have to mean bad. It's tech that's stood the test of time.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• leksak 8y ago
  I came here looking for something related to Emacs and am now disappointed beyond belief.
• hidiegomariani 8y ago
  $499 - waaaat?
• yingbo 8y ago
  I always own my email. The title itself is misleading and decreases my trust to the Helm.
  • garry 8y ago
    Well the point is that if you trust a cloud provider, you don't own your email because Google owns it too. They have it all, in plaintext.
    • yingbo 8y ago
      If I leave my car in a garage for repairing, I still own the car, even the garage can access it. That means, even google can scan my emails, I still own the emails. The topic is about privacy while the title makes it to ownership. That's the misleading part.
• ngngngng 8y ago
  Services like this are popping up everywhere. It seems to me that daplie's successful indiegogo campaign started it. Of course, daplie was then taken over by cryptocurrency nuts that turned what would have been a good product into a token mining personal server for no good reason. The founder of daplie is moving on to found ppl, which is also similar to helm, but without email being the primary focus. I started helping with the email feature before getting a new job and not having any spare time for the project. This is a better solution to email than we had come up with. I still wonder, does one successful kickstarter mean there's enough market demand for these products to succeed? I just can't see personal servers at home becoming anywhere near user friendly enough for the general population. Go try a digital ocean 1-click install 3 times in a row. The results are different every time. I see that same problem happening with these personal servers.
• otterpro 8y ago
  Helm, also known as "Hillary Clinton" v1.0 (just joking, no politics intended). Anyway, while it is kind of awkward having a physical server at home or office, there's a sense of peace knowing i control my own privacy, especially when I can see the server with my own eyes. While people argue about using SaaS email service like Fastmail, nothing can be truly secure, with exception to true end-to-end encrypted email service like ProtonMail. Most email providers, even the privacy-centered email service like Mailfence, are still required to turn over their data in case of local (Belgian) court order. The only thing I'd really want is to have option to not pay for annual $99 fee, and instead have everything configurable so that I can point tunnel it to my own VPS/VPN or I can use it at the office, where the business ISP account allows me to host my own email server.
• linuxdude314 8y ago
  Do you use SPF and DKIM?
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    yes - we do! and DMARC as well
• vxNsr 8y ago
  I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution. I wanna get away from "free" email, but I think it requires a more full blown solution, something which offers a client with the polish of gmail.com along with it's excellent spam detection/protection, that can be self hosted on any random computer/server (using docker, or similar) that is very nearly plug and play. Unfortunately, such a project would need to be OSS, with a consulting-type income structure, but the big companies that would be willing to pay for such a thing all use O365, and would never be willing to try something not nearly as proven.
  • diego_moita 8y ago
    > I definitively believe that we need to fix the way email is handled, but I don't think this is the solution. Sorry, I respectfully disagree. We shouldn't fix email, we should throw it away and replace it. It is almost impossible to have secure email that can't be eavesdropped, even with PGP. Normal people just don't get the need for security and can't bother the hassle of encrypting their email. Also, from an usability perspective, email was a solution for an age without mobile computing. What we need is something like Signal: instant messaging with privacy built in by default.
    • vxNsr 8y ago
      I don't think that idea is realistic. While I agree that it would be great if we could find a fast, secure replacement for email, that's not happening. Signal isn't federated and doesn't allow me to selfhost. If you wanna start a messaging platform that can become a defacto standard you need to allow anyone to implement it, you also need to prove a value-add aside from security and privacy (which 99% of consumers don't care about) which builds momentum, it also shouldn't piggyback or rely on email in anyway. Much the same way that email didn't require a snail mail letter to create an account. email is a solution to a communication problem which happens when two people aren't in the room together. It replaced memos, quick phone calls, long form letters, etc. Instant messaging UX really only addresses the quick phone call and possibly short memos. The UX strongly discourages anything longer than 3-4 lines.
  • 8y ago
• Scirra_Tom 8y ago
  If encrypted emails are stored on Helms cloud, why do we need hardware? Isn't a software solution possible where the user holds the encryption keys? And secondly, if residential internet cuts off - would I lose emails sent to me?
• brtknr 8y ago
  I will be surprised if this takes off. Sounds like a glorified Western Digital's MyCloud with a raspberry pi server... Also that annual subscription is a joke after purchasing the hard disk outright.
  • michaeltbuss 8y ago
    $99/yr is insane for this. Here's the reasoning they provide in their FAQ: > Internet service providers normally don’t provide their customers with networking capabilities that are required to run an email server. In most cases, upgrading to an expensive business class internet service is needed. The subscription service that is part of the Helm service handles this for you without you having to upgrade your ISP. > We handle all fees associated with domain registration and renewal when you create a new domain for your Helm. In addition, we also provide storage for offsite encrypted backups and include access to new features, service and security patches.
• balabaster 8y ago
  This is my perspective alone and isn't meant to sway anyone's opinion, this is just my experience as it's been. Having owned and run my own mail servers myself for some 10 years, I'll tell you something for nothing. Owning your own mail server is not something that comes for free. At least, it wasn't for me. Unless your product has brought something that's drastically different in terms of software, security and spam maintenance, it's too much of a pain in the ass for a non-technical person to manage. Heck, I'm about as technical as they come. I ran plenty of different kinds of mail servers in those ten years. The effort and inconvenience it caused in that time just wasn't worth it to me any more. Having to stress out every time I moved, needing to make sure my internet wasn't shut off until I left the premises and making sure it was already on at the new premises before I could move anything, always being the guy on call if my mail server went down. Then came Cloud and I no longer had to worry about physical hardware ownership and maintenance. I no longer had to worry about if my internet at home was working. The opportunity to move my mail server to a VM, and then hosted Exchange and now Office 365. This has offered me so much mental freedom, I don't think I could go back. The added stress wasn't worth the extra flexibility and security in my mind. All my email is now handled by Microsoft. Sure it costs me a little money each month, but I've got the peace of mind that their security team is on it and while I'm pretty security savvy, I've got nothing on their security team. In addition, I'm not the guy on call when everything falls to pieces. I realize that most technical people won't have my perspective on this, but it's definitely something you should think about.
  • garry 8y ago
    Helm was built specifically for you. I know because I had to run dozens of mail servers myself for email-to-blog platform Posterous, my startup 10 years ago. It was terrible. I've been up and running with Helm for the past month on my garrytan.com email domain and it's been zero maintenance.
• lvh 8y ago
  If the thing you're going against is "corporate server controls your data", why is the answer "EC2 proxy we control"? It sounds like I have to trust that server just as much, and essentially you're telling me you're, for some unspecified reason, more trustworthy than Google? Do you have stats on e-mail deliverability given that you're suggesting I send all my e-mail through a random EC2 EIP? (Is it actually an EIP, or is it just default EC2 egress?)
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Hi lvh - it's not a proxy. The EC2 instance can't see your emails. The Helm server initiates and receives TLS connections through the instance so it's really an extra hop on the internet. We don't see or keep data on deliverability of individual Helm servers. We use a dedicated EIP that we ensure are not on blacklists and configure reverse DNS as well.
    • lvh 8y ago
      If that’s the case, why does it listen on IMAPS/993 and 587?
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        because it's forwarding packets to/from the Helm server in the home
        • lvh 8y ago
          But that's IMAPS and SMTP submission. Is that for random hosts on the Internet (like my phone on LTE) to read/send e-mail?
          • gsreenivas 8y ago
            Yes - these ports are forwarded so customers can reach the server in their home from anywhere in the world.
• meehow 8y ago
  Is it approved by Hillary Clinton?
  • nosjwshere 8y ago
    it's too hammer resistant
• jonbronson 8y ago
  The average home computer user has terrible security practices. Frankly, their email is safer being managed by a competent business. So who is the intended market here?
• thesausageking 8y ago
  If you have to rely on propriety code which makes a constant connection to a server hosted on AWS, I don't see any benefit over Fastmail or Proton. It's less secure and has a higher failure rate.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• dang 8y ago
  Please don't be a jerk on HN ("Oh come on", "modern art installation"). Your question would be just fine without those bits. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • cwyers 8y ago
    Understood. Comment edited.
    • dang 8y ago
      Appreciated! I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18239371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18239371 and marked it off-topic.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
• Ultimatt 8y ago
  Or you could use a raspberry pi and an SD card for like 10% of the price of this device.
• Taranli_Maren 8y ago
  This is an interesting project. I've been following FreedomBox for ages hoping it would end up as a good way to do this, but development has been slow. I do have some questions about the technical details: 1) Is email access provided through the Helm App, SMTP/IMAP, or is there a webmail interface as well? Can you use this device without a smartphone? 2) Which Linux distro is this based on? 3) What file system is used? Is it something like ZFS or BTRFS, which could protect against corruption? Since there seems to be only one drive, I assume there is no RAID-like redundancy included to protect against drive failure? 4) Where are the encrypted backups stored? What is the procedure for recovering them? I expect that the backup recovery keys are also stored offline on the flash drive? 5) How are software updates performed? Are they pushed from a managed system that you control, or does the device itself pull updates automatically on a schedule? How long will you guarantee software updates for? If you stop providing them, or are slow to patch a vulnerability, is there any way for the user to patch the device themselves? Local SSH access perhaps? Lastly, a comment, please consider not overriding the scroll behaviour on your website. It may look slick when it works, but when it doesn't (as it doesn't on my Firefox), it totally breaks the website. In the case of your technology page, it is super-annoying, since the details I want are at the bottom, and I'm forced to watch the slideshow before I can see them.
  • panilsson 8y ago
    How about alternatives that are completely open https://www.kinguardproject.org/ https://www.kinguardproject.org/ ? As mentioned in other comments, having all the sources provides the possibility to review/recreate/modify the code to see what is really going on. Disclaimer, I'm engaged in The Kinguard Project.
• iooi 8y ago
  So this is a bet that people will value their email privacy at $99/year. The last time I went from not paying for something to paying for it was when I started paying for streaming services instead of downloading media. The cost difference was around the same (although $10/mo. feels cheaper than $99/yr), but the benefits feel a lot stronger -- say instead of waiting for a download to finish over the next hour, I can start watching content immediately. Even as a privacy minded person (no social media accounts, etc.), I don't see myself or a big market subscribing to this. The confidence factor is also pretty important since I'm not going to subscribe to a service that I feel has a high chance of shutting down in the next couple of years and possibly suffer email interruptions / data loss.
• honkycat 8y ago
  Awful name, there are so many projects called helm already.
• xienze 8y ago
  Wow, $500 for the device and $100 per year for service? AND the usual concerns about keeping the device up and running? What honestly makes this more appealing than $50 per year for Fastmail?
• simias 8y ago
  So this is bikeshed territory but what with the shape of the "box"? You can't stack anything on it and it seems to take much more room than necessary that way. Reading the (mouse hijacking) technology page I see: >Helm is a high-performance server with capabilities normally found in larger, business-class hardware. To accomplish this performance in a smaller (and quieter) form factor, Helm has been engineered to dissipate heat through its aluminum base. Is that the reason behind the design? Does it mean it's fully passive cooling? Also is it really necessary to have that much cooling in the first place? An email server doesn't need that much juice normally, especially for a small handful of users.
  • garry 8y ago
    The design actually allows for server stacking when you need more compute or storage. It does fully passive cooling with no fan.
    • npongratz 8y ago
      Are there third parties selling servers with this form factor? Or would we be locked into Helm when we need more compute or storage?
• isserson 8y ago
  I really appreciate that the "hero" video _asked_ me to click. That already shows you respect me enough not to just auto-play in my face. I think the video suffers from a bit too much dramatization, especially at the end with the triumphant movie trailer music and awkward shots of people looking directly into the camera. I also think some of the copy on the main page could be edited to sound clearer and more natural. For example: * "Keys only you have access to" -> "Only you have the keys" * "Room for growth" -> "Room to grow" * "Gets better over time" -> "Always improving [etc.]" I mention all the above because I really like what I see here and I'm looking for room in my budget after I post this comment :) Good luck!
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    Thanks for the feedback!
• makk 8y ago
  I imagine exactly 0 mainstream consumers care about this. What is the target market?
• michaeltbuss 8y ago
  I'm having a hard time understanding who would buy this. Non-techies aren't looking for a solution to this problem. And, the moment you mention encryption keys in your marketing you've lost them. For $499 and $99/yr (!!), I don't think you'll convince techies this a worthwhile product either. Maybe the ultra paranoid users. But, in my experience those are also the people who can build their own solution.
• petilon 8y ago
  I don't like Google reading my email either. But I still use Gmail because I can search 20 years of my emails (including ones I imported from Yahoo mail) instantly. It is surprising no one has mentioned search in this discussion.
  • CaptSpify 8y ago
    Probably because Gmail isn't the only email provider that lets you search. I run my own email server and can search them just fine.
• jurschreuder 8y ago
  @hillary_clinton ???
• ppeetteerr 8y ago
  Have you heard of Synology? Their NAS's are not just personal email server, but personal document servers, web servers, everything, configured through an online interface. I would highly recommend you check it out.
• Tepix 8y ago
  If you feel like doing this yourself, get something like a Raspberry Pi 3 (or better, like the Asus Tinker Board) and use sovereign (from github) to automatically install your own mail server/owncloud on it. Then get a dirt cheap VPS (less than $15/yr) from lowendbox/lowendtalk and run a OpenVPN tunnel. So what's the advantage of having this at home instead of an ISP? For one, backup and restore is fast and easy. You can use your NAS that's at home. You may want to have an additional offline backup in case your home network gets completely compromised. A box at home is also more difficult to tamper with. If you're paranoid, put it into a tamper resistant box.
  • lolc 8y ago
    Unfortunately reputation management is a requirement nowadays for all senders of MTA. And it's an ongoing hassle. Helm promises to handle this in a way that doesn't let them read transmitted mails. You still have to trust them ultimately, but the stakes are higher.
    • lvh 8y ago
      The only Helm EC2 instance I've seen listens on 587 and 993, which seems incongruent with that promise.
      • gsreenivas 8y ago
        You missed some other ports including 25.
        • lvh 8y ago
          That wasn't intended as a complete list? Elsewhere I also mentioned the mystery HTTP services on something like 8443 (but that's to wit).
• jxy 8y ago
  I can't help but feel that this is something that Apple should do with their AirPort Time Capsule. Give user the choice of hosting their own iCloud instance on the AirPort Time Capsule. It feels like a great way of selling more hardwares.
• lvh 8y ago
  If the EC2 instance is just a proxy and not where your mail lives, why does it run IMAPS?
• paraditedc 8y ago
  I read the whole tech page and some of the comments here. I might be willing to pay for this service, but not in its current form. I wouldn't want to spend 500USD on a proprietary hardware in addition to paying a subscription fee. What needs to happen to convince me to pay: Open up the hardware component as a platform for anyone to extend (allowing direct ssh, or using my own hardware). It's fine to not open source the email server code. But I would like to utilize the hardware to do other things, like file storage, etc. Instead of waiting for your company to build other features, I would rather have community contributed (preferably open source) plugins that integrates with your ecosystem and runs on the hardware.
  • garry 8y ago
    This is extremely valuable feedback and worth strongly considering. When the iPhone came out, it didn't support apps - just built-in features like Mail and Mobile Safari. I agree with you that an app store for Helm could be valuable.
    • Alex3917 8y ago
      This could be especially valuable as a way to build email apps for enterprise. Especially if there were a good API that returned email data in JMAP format. I know Nylas tries to do this, but their model doesn't really work for me.
      • dpedu 8y ago
        Why JMAP over something universal like JSON?
        • Alex3917 8y ago
          JMAP returns data in JSON, but with a standardized schema. It's better than the current status quo, where each email provider returns API data in JSON but using their own schema, meaning you need to build different endpoints and methods to work with each email provider. The spec is about to be finalized, so there is no reason why email providers who haven't yet released an API shouldn't be using it.
• reitanqild 8y ago
  On my wishlist. Also the yearly fee seems high compared to a lot of other stuff but still reasonable, especially as you start adding more services.
• kjullien 8y ago
  Can anybody explain why they want me to buy a 500$ piece of hardware? Can the same result not be achieved with a Raspberry Pi and any self-hosted open-source mail server? Why is this not simply a download?
  • nvarsj 8y ago
    Because Silly Valley.
• icco 8y ago
  Wait, how does this hardware stacking work? Anyone have photos of the actual product? This all looks rendered.
  • Willamin 8y ago
    It almost looks like there's a port in the top that expansions attach to. However, in the specifications, there is no expansion port listed. This makes me think that stacking is simply stacking, then we use a usb cable to attach the pieces.
    • gsreenivas 8y ago
      There is no cable for stacking. The expansion units expose a USB-C male connector and plug into the base unit's USB-C female connector.
• eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  FreedomBox does that, and FreedomBox is Debian. It runs on a cheap SBC and you can use a 15$/year VPS as a relay.
• sigi45 8y ago
  Sooo you want me to pay 100$ per year for hardware i'm running at home already? Nope. And i also do not want to have my email gateway at home. I do move, i do like to shutdown hardware, i like to travel and might not be able to access my hardware. There are good small and secure email providers out there which costs money. I would even prever a managed vps server somewhere.
• lvh 8y ago
  Have you gotten any third party audits? Are you publishing the results?
• watchmecalc 8y ago
  "Want to do sketchy stuff, but not nerdy enough to set up your own email server?"
• watchmecalc 8y ago
  "Want to do sketchy stuff, but not nerdy enough to set up your own server?"
• dguo 8y ago
  Just a heads up to any Helm employees, it looks like the website is running React in development mode. It should be easy to fix: https://reactjs.org/docs/optimizing-performance.html#use-the-production-build https://reactjs.org/docs/optimizing-performance.html#use-the...
• scruffyherder 8y ago
  So they use a registered ip proxy to your own email server. I've been doing that for a super long time, and it's a great solution, at least until about 5 years ago. Most providers will blacklist anyone who isn't one of them. So I front my home email server with a big account to relay in and out of. It kinda sucks, but all my stuff just works. So I can happily fire up my Macintosh II, load up Outlook 98 and read email. I use Office 365 to front my domain, I think it's like $12 a month for the corporate version so I can have it front domain emails. And that means I get office for all my devices so I'm not the one having to deal with having old versions of stuff.
• jhabdas 8y ago
  If your were real men you'd give it away for free and find a way to monetize your audience through a a value proposition that exceeds what it seems you've done. Cute marketing site but that's kinda lame yo.
  • dang 8y ago
    Your comments have repeatedly been breaking the HN guidelines. Would you please not do that? We ban accounts that won't stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• lifeformed 8y ago
  The stackable expansion is a really nice idea.
• xte 8y ago
  Mh, not much convinced. I'm a fan of the idea of personal home server and I have built myself one having find a ISP that offer static IPv4 and v6 addresses with a reasonable price; for end-users I also understand the opportunity and need of pre-built appliance since they may understand actual sorry state of tech evolution but may not have enough knowledge to act autonomously but... Well your appliance seems to be too ridden by "modern design" I personally call it catastrophic.
• GNOMES 8y ago
  As someone who has a homelab, I would be interested if there was an option to use your own hardware, and just subscribe to their email service. I would accept the "risks of having my own hardware" that they couldn't guarantee up time etc. +1 if it was containerized.
• lazylizard 8y ago
  So. The case is interesting maybe. But 500usd for a $pi with a 30usd ssd? And then 99usd/yr to route mail via a t2 nano on 1yr free tier? So in a year's time the relay service will stop? Or before that the ec2 instance will go down but then that means enough helms have been sold... I could be wrong....
• readitone 8y ago
  I like the design. Its cool. But i cannot see the price to be reasonable. Personally if someone wants local server - mail with be not enough of a selling point for 499usd. So why not buy ds218+ (300usd) from synology and two 4tb NAS hard disks (200usd)- 500 usd? The setup is dead simple. It has mail server backup and media software.
• linsomniac 8y ago
  I'm not usually one to theorize spying, but I'm gonna call it here: I'm betting that "remote administrative access" is found between the EC2 instance and the at-home box. My first thought in seeing gsreenivas' discussion about the VPN/iptables/EC2 is that the physical box at home makes it feel more secure than an EC2 solution, but I'm not sure that is actually the case.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    there is no remote administrative access from the EC2 instance or anywhere
• cosinetau 8y ago
  I really need an open source composition of preexisting technologies that this product is trying to solve.
• kirillzubovsky 8y ago
  Had a pleasure of setting up and running a personal mail server before, and honestly, unless you are highly technical and enjoy doing that, a consumer solution is nice to have. It’s not just the original setup that takes a long time, it’s configuration and maintenance, software updates, mail delivery hacks... Basically if you’ve ever wanted your own mail server, Helm should be it.
• leowoo91 8y ago
  It is not even April 1st.
• megous 8y ago
  To me there are these risks to e-mail: 1. e-mail address loss (domain loss, service termination if you don't own the domain, ...) 2. email service loss (server goes down, ...) 3. delivery mechanism compromise (someone gets to read future messages, can be used to hijack online accounts) 4. sending mechanism compromise (partial impersonation, etc.) 5. e-mail archive compromise (someone gets to read old messages) 6. archive loss You have to think hard about each point: - how it can happen, - how would you detect it, - what it could lead to, and then prepare for those circumstances via preventive measures, and by having a plan for when it happens. For example if you register your domains under an account where email that was used for registration comes from one of those domains 3. can easily lead to 1. and you're hosed. You have to have way to restore 2. without access to e-mail addresses that will not work while 2. is happening. You will most probably have no way of detecting 3./4. before bad things start happening. etc. etc. E-mail is not really something to fuck with, because of how important it is for authentication on the web. Helm website doesn't work for me, but if you're thinking about an easy way to have a personal email server, and don't have experience, be careful.
• lrvick 8y ago
  As someone building a personal email system in using Helm (the kubernetes package manager) I have a feeling the naming conflict is going to get confusing.
• mcguire 8y ago
  Ok, in the "Do you know where your email is?" section, what's the dot in northeast Alabama?
• auganov 8y ago
  This feels like the infamous HN dropbox thread. I don't know if it's solving the problem well or not but this can totally make a killing. Privacy has really gone mainstream, it's pretty clear people are looking for new ways to engage with tech regardless of utilitarian considerations. The holiday season is coming and 500$ is reasonable.
• egonschiele 8y ago
  Given the recent microchip hack, do folks feel more or less safe having this in their house?
• 8fingerlouie 8y ago
  It's great idea, though i'm not sure who the target customer is. Most people who care enough about security understand what this device does, along with actually buying one of these, will most likely already have the technical skills to setup something similar themselves. That being said, once it supports multiple domains/domain aliases and webmail, I'll probably be picking one up, if not for anything else then for fun. Is it open to users to be able to run their own docker images on it ?
• blahyawnblah 8y ago
  What's the advantage over building your own email server at someplace like aws/linode/azure/gcp/rackspace/digital ocean?
• edpichler 8y ago
  I personally like very much the solution, but I don't like having one more device on my table. PS: For some reason, people are willing to pay more and see more value on "physical things" than virtual solutions. Anyone knows the psychology behind this behaviour?
• emilfihlman 8y ago
  Another product ruined by "design".
• bostonvaulter2 8y ago
  This looks really exciting, and I hope we see more offerings like this in the future.
• ktamura 8y ago
  I have to point out that while their marketing copy claims that they want to know "as little as possible" about their customers, they have Segment's JavaScript tag on thehelm.com Do you know what Segment does? It makes it easy to send data anywhere -> https://segment.com/catalog https://segment.com/catalog
  • dice 8y ago
    The site is also completely unsuable without JS enabled. Apps market? Piwik (tracking)? Why would I allow these? https://i.imgur.com/OFWYnWy.png https://i.imgur.com/OFWYnWy.png
  • Anthony-G 8y ago
    Also, no actual content appears on the page without allowing third-party JavaScript. Even though I'm interested in hearing about new mail services, I chose to close the tab rather than spend time figuring out which of the 17 third-party domains I should white-list in order to see some text. I doubt I'm the only one who made this choice. For some of us, content is still the reason we use a web browser; that includes those of us who value privacy and minimising the amount of arbitrary code we run on our devices.
• filmgirlcw 8y ago
  Despite my initial misgivings, I would actually consider something like this, even at this price point, but there are a few things that for now are non-starters. 1) I’d need to feel secure my email would actually deliver correctly. Zack Whittaker on Twitter [1] mentioned that the CEO’s email wound up in his Gmail spam folder. This would be utterly unacceptable for me, even though I don’t frequently email new people. 2) The single domain per server totally makes this DOA for me. I have multiple domains with separate, non-aliased mailboxes, controlled via legacy GApps accounts. It winds up being a security advantage because I use different accounts/domains for different services and that means that the likelihood of me being severely hacked is lower as a result. But beyond that, a single domain designation seems off for this type of product. The people willing to spend $500 on this kind of hardware are the people who have multiple domains. 3) I worry about the long term future of a startup like this. If they go out of business, not only is my hardware now worthless, I now have to migrate my inboxes to Fastmail or GSuite or something else, or face configuring my own local mail server, which is what I was trying to avoid to begin with. And in my case, that would also potentially mean giving up grandfathered GApps accounts with 50 users and custom domain support. I wish Helm luck and we need disruptive email startups and better turnkey hosting solutions, but I’m not sure this is the right solution at the moment. [1]: https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1052619938349899776?s=21 https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1052619938349899776...
• mdevere 8y ago
  i really like the idea but it's too expensive for me. i would consider this it if was $200 didn't have a subscription fee.
• jamesfisher 8y ago
  I got a long way down the page before I realized this was a physical device. Most of the text suggests it's a self-hosted email server, like postfix etc.
• starlightfury 8y ago
  https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/
• nwmcsween 8y ago
  It's entertaining that setting up an email server is so painful that there is specialized prepackaged hardware is coming out for it.
• amelius 8y ago
  Nice, except for the form factor which doesn't allow stacking objects on top of it.
• tracker1 8y ago
  Don't most home ISPs block inbound server ports? I know Cox in particular does, as well as a few others. I have a business account for this reason that I pay a bit more (better support response too), but not sure if this is something a lot of people can even use without a backing service. Cool idea though. As an aside, any suggestions on easy to install/configure/update mail in a box + letsencrypt options? Thinking of throwing something on an rPI for similar chores.
  • ekianjo 8y ago
    They block port 25, but secure ports are usually open.
• agentdrtran 8y ago
  I have no idea who this is for. Non-technical people don't care, and this is still too complex for them. Technical people can use Fastmail or other secure, hosted options. $500 for proprietary hardware is so steep, there are software options for the Rpi that do something similar for $40!
  • geuis 8y ago
    Well I might be a good example. I’m highly technical and I never want to try configuring an email server again. Did that once and no thanks. I can do it, but since it’s not a particular technical subdomain I have much experience with and its difficult and time consuming. And doing maintenance is just an ongoing headache I don’t want. However, I recognize the value of having my email served and saved on premises. If I could have a fairly secure and automated backup from my local files, that’s great. If I can also use a self hosted webmail interface then I want that too. I agree that $500 is a lot, but it’s not an absurdly large amount.
• nikisweeting 8y ago
  I'd rather purchase their software and run this on my own FreeNAS box. The features sound awesome, but I don't need their fancy custom hardware.
• sandov 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but I'm pessimistic about this. 99% of people just don't care about privacy, and those who do would probably prefer to set up their self-hosted email by themselves. I really hope to be proven wrong.
  • EGreg 8y ago
    It’s not even that. It’s that the flipside of decentralization or even federation is SPAM. How do you prevent getting SPAM from people you don’t know, while at the same time having others accept YOUR emails? That’s why today ANTISPAM on the net has all but shut down the option of having email outside the big boys or edu.
• saudioger 8y ago
  Wish this wasn't software bound to hardware
• jonthepirate 8y ago
  Am I the only person who wished Hillary Clinton would have appeared in that promo video?
  • golemiprague 8y ago
    I don't think someone who is not an Arab sheikh or an investment bank can afford her service rates.
• Sophistifunk 8y ago
  I want nothing to do with the shit-sandwich that is hosting mail, and have utmost respect for those of you that can. But I would love a small server box that can be simply stacked to increase capacity for home labs and desktop k8s clusters without having to buy and configure a switch and complicated power delivery.
  • WA9ACE 8y ago
    I'm not sure if this fits your use case, but it's what I plan on ordering soon https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/#buyawesomefreenasmini https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/#buyawesomefreenasmin...
• franciscrick1 8y ago
  Yeah, but is it RISCV?
  • O_H_E 8y ago
    Nope, the specs page says that it's ARM Cortex processor. RISC-V is still new and expensive for companies like this
• jeannekamikaze 8y ago
  A proprietary piece of hardware that connects to a proprietary, US-based cloud. This is the closest thing to garbage in the world of email.
• solipsism 8y ago
  Who is this for? The regular person doesn't trust Helm any more than they trust Google... nor do they care that much. The privacy oriented techie doesn't trust Helm any more than they trust Google... so they're going to do everything themselves from scratch anyway, so what does Helm do for them?
• tknot 8y ago
  There are of course alternatives that are completely open https://www.kinguardproject.org/ https://www.kinguardproject.org/ Not sure about the Helm but i havn't found any source code nor any description on which open source components they use. But i for one would not trust my personal information to a closed box. Disclaimer, i'm engaged in the Kinguard project.
• skrebbel 8y ago
  I really love the tin-foil-hat reference in the name and the product design.
• sarabande 8y ago
  Is it necessary to have a hardware device for this to function? I'd love to pay $99/year for a 120 GB encrypted email service, but don't want the hassle of owning more stuff. I'd go with ProtonMail but it's seriously expensive for the data price (24€/mo = 288€/yr for just 20GB). I also can't imagine that having a hardware device in-home actually reduces the unit costs of that storage, so if this were an on-line service priced even cheaper, I'd love to pay for it. My concerns echo those of commenter 'andr'.
• baldfat 8y ago
  Thought it was the awesome Open Source Music Synthesizer. https://github.com/mtytel/helm https://github.com/mtytel/helm
• JamesAdir 8y ago
  Seems like an amazing solution for really a non-existent problem. The average consumer doesn't bother with his email privacy if he had other online solution would have been much more popular. The more technical consumer will probably would prefer to run something open source on his own server. So I wonder who is willing to buy and pay for this kind of solution.
• jreyes333 8y ago
  This is cool guys. Kicking things off at the right time as well. However think I might be missing a few things. 1) Wasn't the whole point of email moving to the cloud to enable access on any device anywhere? If I move my email to Helm can I still access it on the go? 2) Assuming I can access it on the go. I'd need pretty fast upload speeds right? I live in Australia, and our internet is god awful.
  • gsreenivas 8y ago
    1.) it is globally accessible through the gateway it connects to 2.) for email services, you don't need much in the way of bandwidth for this to work very well.
• Jemm 8y ago
  "Helm currently ships to anywhere in the United States. Unfortunately, we cannot ship to PO Boxes, Army Post Office (APO) or Fleet Post Office (FPO) addresses."
• sreitshamer 8y ago
  I use mailinabox https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox on DigitalOcean droplets for my personal and work email domains. It’s been working great for months.
• jrnichols 8y ago
  Interesting idea, but i'm not going to lie - I hate the case design. it reminds me of how obnoxious the Boxee Box was. Needs its own footprint, can't stack it or anything else, and it is anything but unobtrusive. the NUC form factor would be great.
• chaitanya 8y ago
  (I sent this as an email to helm's support but since the founders are responding here I am duplicating this here) Your technology page mentions that you provide an mx gateway (presumably for inbound email for home networks that don't usually have a static IP address). You also mention that emails forwarded to the helm server via your gateway are encrypted end-to-end and your gateway cannot read the contents of that email. I am unable to understand how this happens. TLS is not end-to-end -- since the sending mail server will establish a TLS connection with your gateway it means that you necessarily have to decrypt the incoming email before forwarding it to the helm server. Can you explain to me how I am wrong here?
• rounce 8y ago
  I'm surprised that I'm the only person who thought this was a Helm chart to run a personal email service on Kubernetes.
• arkaine 8y ago
  Good luck with AWS/Azure IP addresses. Most cloud providers have their entire IP blocks of compute services (VM, etc.) blacklisted by the majority of DNSBL and antispam actors. If the EC2 instances act as the last outgoing relay (the last IP) you will encounter email being rejected by recipient mail servers at some point. Best solution is to have your own AS number and IP ranges and your own hosting.