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DO use a your own domain. Advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Instead of being at the mercy of whatever email provider you choose, you're free to move y

DO use a your own domain. Advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Instead of being at the mercy of whatever email provider you choose, you're free to move your domain where ever you want, without updating "a million" senders. DO NOT host your own email server though. A couple of decades ago it made perfect sense to do so, but these days it's simply not worth the trouble. Instead use Google/Outlook/Apple/Whatever to host your custom domain and use their offerings with your custom domain. My personal domain is hosted by mxroute.com, which has served me well for a lot of years by now. Unlimited email accounts and the only restriction is storage, which i can upgrade. Very little downtime (none i've noticed). All that's left is to make a backup with regular intervals, which i to do a small local machine using imapsync, which then in turn makes backups of the emails (and regular data) to a local drive and a cloud backup.

tupolef 3y ago
I've read that advice, about not hosting your own email server, every week for a few years now, but at least for anyone with a few years of self-hosting experience I would disagree. There is just a little more checkpoints than 15 years ago. Before, you needed to check your reputation on spamfilters, be careful of viruses and sending rates and dome basic DNS entries. Nowadays, check that your IPs are clean, subscribe to some monitoring for ip/domain reputation, host your own dns server and correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover. But when it's in place there is nothing special to update or debug. I would suggest to check ISPconfig as a semi-DIY solution.
- 8fingerlouie 3y ago
  I'm not saying it's hard if you know what you're doing, but "correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover" is a lot of technology for simply sending and receiving email. Considering that emails are insecure by design, and any email will have at least 2 participants, and you have no control over where the remote participant sends/receives emails, self hosting for privacy concerns is also pretty much pointless, except of course if you encrypt emails, but then the server doesn't matter anymore, and you might as well just use a public provider. My argument is that by using a custom domain with a public provider, you will get almost all the benefits of self hosting emails, but none of the disadvantages. You're still in control of your domain, and even if your provider shuts down, you're just a couple of MX records away from your new provider.
  - tupolef 3y ago
    You're right about the difficulty and the privacy, but I hope that people will still host their own little part of internet. The fundamental parts that you can host universally today are still a website and a mail server. Everyhing else like fileservers, webapps, federated services, streaming, vpns, game servers... have multiple implementations and evolve rapidly every year. If people no longer host the most fundamental services, it's leaving the play field to the industry. And one day we won't even be able to do it anymore.
    - 8fingerlouie 3y ago
      >If people no longer host the most fundamental services, it's leaving the play field to the industry. While i tend to agree, i also fear that this exact phrase is what is keeping email in the dark. Email in it's current form is old, very old, and everything "modern" about is DKIM, SPF, etc, has been added in the form of X- headers, but besides that, nothing much has changed, and because it needs to be compatible with potentially decades old software, nothing much will change. At the same time, email has been crucial to business/industry needs, and while alternatives exist, they kinda feel like the "instant messenger" days of the early 2000s, where there were a dozen or more different instant messaging networks, and you needed an account everywhere to be able to talk to people. Just look back at 2020 and COVID. How many different "Collaboration" platforms did you sign up for just to be able to work ? Teams ? Zoom ? Slack ? Discord ? How many of them are open standards ? How many different mail providers did you sign up with ? (making spam catching accounts for collaboration platforms doesn't count). Email is in dire need of a complete rework, but with so many different implementations of both servers and clients, that is not likely to happen fast. By "reducing" the number of participants, it allows changes to the standard to be more radical, and allows for faster propagation of those changes. As it is now, those changes can only be small, and must be iteratively rolled out. Many of the proposed addons like DKIM has almost a decade behind it (if not more), and it is still not mandatory. Email needs an "email 2.0" which breaks compatibility with older versions. Is this not an issue for the web then ? Well, despite having a relatively small amount of browser implementations, as well as a relatively small amount of web server implementations, at least compared to email, if you look at HTTP 2.0, that also took a long time to roll out, but i assume because HTTP has had a couple of decades less than email, the problem is not as widespread yet.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Most deliverable domain names aren't DNSSEC-signed. Does anyone here have good information about the impact of signing on deliverability? It wouldn't surprise me if it was used as a signal somewhere, since DNSSEC adoption is so small and signing selects for the fussiest networks.
Brajeshwar 3y ago
Yes, I agree with this, and it is my pattern too. One can replace MXRoute with other providers you are comfortable with. Google is still an acceptable candidate for your custom domain email. I do have Migadu[1] as a throw-everything-in for all new and other domains that are not that important. The idea is, “Can I walk out of this provider and move to another in minutes?” I have experimented and walked in and out of Gmail, Migadu a few times to see how it goes. For backup, I have tried quite a few, and the simplest I found (for now) is just to run Thunderbird (daily, weekly) and set it to download a local copy via POP. MBOX is an open and acceptable format by most other clients (if you need to change clients). I will continue to clean up and streamline the processes, but the general idea is to have a backup (preferably local) somewhere, while the primary email can be accessed from your choice of client or the web. 1. https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com
- 8fingerlouie 3y ago
  > just to run Thunderbird (daily, weekly) and set it to download a local copy via POP I considered this option, but instead just setup a local imapserver (Dovecot), i then simply do a one way imapsync, including deletions, from my provider to my local imap server, into each users Maildir. The reason for imap over Thunderbird is that the machine backs up email for everybody in the household, and with imap and dovecot, i can keep each users email in their homedirectory, and simply run my normal backup to include mail data. When i eventually migrate to another email provider, the option for automated scripted backups will be a factor. I also considered simply using Office365 along with a Synology and their HyperBackup package for imap, but what i have now provides the same benefits, with less hardware costs.
hnben 3y ago
> DO NOT host your own email server though I have a minimal postfix that simply forwards everything to my actual mail-address on posteo.de pro: setup is really simple and requires no maintenance at all con: I can not send emails from that domain
sebazzz 3y ago
> use /Outlook/ to host your custom domain and use their offerings with your custom domain Well, unless you’re willing to pay for a business Office 365 license, it won’t happen on Outlook anymore. Outlook only supported Godaddy, of all registrars, anyway, but now next in November they will remove custom domain support altogether. I’ve now migrated to iCloud, which supports any registrar (certainly not what I expected from Apple), and supports some registrars like Cloudflare automatically.
- 8fingerlouie 3y ago
  How is iCloud working out for you ? I've been thinking about moving our mails there. Not because i'm unhappy with mxroute, but because it's "one more service", and everybody in the household already uses iCloud. I'm not too worried about "vendor lock-in" as i have the "exit strategy" already in the form of backups and custom mail domain, so it simply comes down to ease of use.
  - sebazzz 3y ago
    Well I only had it so I could have the family's devices backupped (excluding Photos because those I backup on OneDrive). But it turned out e-mail, including wildcard-catch-all, is included in iCloud+. It works well, and I use it through the IMAP protocol.
    - crossroadsguy 3y ago
      iCloud limits the number of aliases you can use and it's impossible to reply from those "catch-all" email addresses you create. So iCloud falls short of that. Also not only there's a payment thing that needs to keep going on (which is with any provider really) but you also have to essentially be on Apple ecosystem. But this can also be excused - at least there is no real lock in here. But lack of ability to reply from custom catch-call addresses is the real bummer.

tupolef 3y ago

I've read that advice, about not hosting your own email server, every week for a few years now, but at least for anyone with a few years of self-hosting experience I would disagree. There is just a little more checkpoints than 15 years ago. Before, you needed to check your reputation on spamfilters, be careful of viruses and sending rates and dome basic DNS entries. Nowadays, check that your IPs are clean, subscribe to some monitoring for ip/domain reputation, host your own dns server and correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover. But when it's in place there is nothing special to update or debug. I would suggest to check ISPconfig as a semi-DIY solution.

8fingerlouie 3y ago
I'm not saying it's hard if you know what you're doing, but "correctly use IPv6, DNSSec, Rspamd, Dkim, Dmarc, Spf, autoconfig/autodiscover" is a lot of technology for simply sending and receiving email. Considering that emails are insecure by design, and any email will have at least 2 participants, and you have no control over where the remote participant sends/receives emails, self hosting for privacy concerns is also pretty much pointless, except of course if you encrypt emails, but then the server doesn't matter anymore, and you might as well just use a public provider. My argument is that by using a custom domain with a public provider, you will get almost all the benefits of self hosting emails, but none of the disadvantages. You're still in control of your domain, and even if your provider shuts down, you're just a couple of MX records away from your new provider.
- tupolef 3y ago
  You're right about the difficulty and the privacy, but I hope that people will still host their own little part of internet. The fundamental parts that you can host universally today are still a website and a mail server. Everyhing else like fileservers, webapps, federated services, streaming, vpns, game servers... have multiple implementations and evolve rapidly every year. If people no longer host the most fundamental services, it's leaving the play field to the industry. And one day we won't even be able to do it anymore.
  - 8fingerlouie 3y ago
    >If people no longer host the most fundamental services, it's leaving the play field to the industry. While i tend to agree, i also fear that this exact phrase is what is keeping email in the dark. Email in it's current form is old, very old, and everything "modern" about is DKIM, SPF, etc, has been added in the form of X- headers, but besides that, nothing much has changed, and because it needs to be compatible with potentially decades old software, nothing much will change. At the same time, email has been crucial to business/industry needs, and while alternatives exist, they kinda feel like the "instant messenger" days of the early 2000s, where there were a dozen or more different instant messaging networks, and you needed an account everywhere to be able to talk to people. Just look back at 2020 and COVID. How many different "Collaboration" platforms did you sign up for just to be able to work ? Teams ? Zoom ? Slack ? Discord ? How many of them are open standards ? How many different mail providers did you sign up with ? (making spam catching accounts for collaboration platforms doesn't count). Email is in dire need of a complete rework, but with so many different implementations of both servers and clients, that is not likely to happen fast. By "reducing" the number of participants, it allows changes to the standard to be more radical, and allows for faster propagation of those changes. As it is now, those changes can only be small, and must be iteratively rolled out. Many of the proposed addons like DKIM has almost a decade behind it (if not more), and it is still not mandatory. Email needs an "email 2.0" which breaks compatibility with older versions. Is this not an issue for the web then ? Well, despite having a relatively small amount of browser implementations, as well as a relatively small amount of web server implementations, at least compared to email, if you look at HTTP 2.0, that also took a long time to roll out, but i assume because HTTP has had a couple of decades less than email, the problem is not as widespread yet.
tptacek 3y ago
Most deliverable domain names aren't DNSSEC-signed. Does anyone here have good information about the impact of signing on deliverability? It wouldn't surprise me if it was used as a signal somewhere, since DNSSEC adoption is so small and signing selects for the fussiest networks.

Brajeshwar 3y ago

Yes, I agree with this, and it is my pattern too. One can replace MXRoute with other providers you are comfortable with. Google is still an acceptable candidate for your custom domain email. I do have Migadu[1] as a throw-everything-in for all new and other domains that are not that important. The idea is, “Can I walk out of this provider and move to another in minutes?” I have experimented and walked in and out of Gmail, Migadu a few times to see how it goes. For backup, I have tried quite a few, and the simplest I found (for now) is just to run Thunderbird (daily, weekly) and set it to download a local copy via POP. MBOX is an open and acceptable format by most other clients (if you need to change clients). I will continue to clean up and streamline the processes, but the general idea is to have a backup (preferably local) somewhere, while the primary email can be accessed from your choice of client or the web. 1. https://www.migadu.com https://www.migadu.com

8fingerlouie 3y ago
> just to run Thunderbird (daily, weekly) and set it to download a local copy via POP I considered this option, but instead just setup a local imapserver (Dovecot), i then simply do a one way imapsync, including deletions, from my provider to my local imap server, into each users Maildir. The reason for imap over Thunderbird is that the machine backs up email for everybody in the household, and with imap and dovecot, i can keep each users email in their homedirectory, and simply run my normal backup to include mail data. When i eventually migrate to another email provider, the option for automated scripted backups will be a factor. I also considered simply using Office365 along with a Synology and their HyperBackup package for imap, but what i have now provides the same benefits, with less hardware costs.

hnben 3y ago

> DO NOT host your own email server though I have a minimal postfix that simply forwards everything to my actual mail-address on posteo.de pro: setup is really simple and requires no maintenance at all con: I can not send emails from that domain

sebazzz 3y ago

> use /Outlook/ to host your custom domain and use their offerings with your custom domain Well, unless you’re willing to pay for a business Office 365 license, it won’t happen on Outlook anymore. Outlook only supported Godaddy, of all registrars, anyway, but now next in November they will remove custom domain support altogether. I’ve now migrated to iCloud, which supports any registrar (certainly not what I expected from Apple), and supports some registrars like Cloudflare automatically.

8fingerlouie 3y ago
How is iCloud working out for you ? I've been thinking about moving our mails there. Not because i'm unhappy with mxroute, but because it's "one more service", and everybody in the household already uses iCloud. I'm not too worried about "vendor lock-in" as i have the "exit strategy" already in the form of backups and custom mail domain, so it simply comes down to ease of use.
- sebazzz 3y ago
  Well I only had it so I could have the family's devices backupped (excluding Photos because those I backup on OneDrive). But it turned out e-mail, including wildcard-catch-all, is included in iCloud+. It works well, and I use it through the IMAP protocol.
  - crossroadsguy 3y ago
    iCloud limits the number of aliases you can use and it's impossible to reply from those "catch-all" email addresses you create. So iCloud falls short of that. Also not only there's a payment thing that needs to keep going on (which is with any provider really) but you also have to essentially be on Apple ecosystem. But this can also be excused - at least there is no real lock in here. But lack of ability to reply from custom catch-call addresses is the real bummer.