4 ms·

I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that. I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really und

I like to run my email on my server, but it’s a significant undertaking and I don’t recommend you do that. I agree with Ben on this point, but don't really understand why things are this way. In looking for a replacement for Google Reader I found a bunch of high quality self hosted options. Similarly, hosting a website on your own server (or one you rent from someone else) is a pretty trivial exercise for anyone that reads Hacker News. So why is email so damn hard? Where is the Wordpress of email?

analog 14y ago
Gmail is the Wordpress of email surely?
- gtz57 14y ago
  Gmail isn't self-hosted or open source. He wasn't just saying both are popular. Unless you meant something else?
  - analog 14y ago
    Wordpress and Gmail are both free and the market leaders. I'd bet that most people who use Wordpress don't care that it's open source, they just like the price and that it works well.
kennu 14y ago
Would you mind listing the high quality self hosted alternatives to Google Reader? I host my own email (Postfix+Dovecot on Ubuntu is pretty simple), and I might like to do it for RSS feeds, too.
- brianwillis 14y ago
  It looks like I'll be sticking with Fever[1]. The assigning-temperatures-to-posts thing seemed like a gimmick at first, but it actually works somewhat well, and you can ignore it if you want to. It also syncs with Reeder[2] on the iPhone/iPad which I've been using with Google Reader and am reluctant to part with. [1]: http://www.feedafever.com http://www.feedafever.com [2]: http://reederapp.com/ http://reederapp.com/
- mnutt 14y ago
  Newsblur is also open source: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur
groby_b 14y ago
Uh, thanks. I don't want the Wordpress of e-mail, at least not self-hosted. If you've ever run a WP site, you're well aware of the number of security fixes (and the insane number of attacks, if the site happens to be semi-popular) that go with it. That's why it's a significant undertaking - the setup is a one-time cost, but fighting to stay as secure as possible is an ongoing nightmare. [Edit: Not to diss WP here. I think they're doing a great job. It's the general problem of staying up-to-date re: patches]
jfoster 14y ago
Spam is one aspect of why email is hard, and having more than just a few email accounts on your host helps to tackle that problem. Take a look in your Gmail spam folder at how much they've managed to weed out.
- brdrak 14y ago
  I self host my personal email and have to use gmail at work. Spam is actually the one thing that I find gmail weaker at compared with self hosting. My nearly stock Postfix setup with a few basic anti-spam settings, rejects about 80% of spam. Then stock SpamAssassin config (with a nightly sa-update cron job) gets accuracy somewhere into the 90s. The SpamAssassin Bayes plugin takes it to very close to 100% (maybe 2 or 3 Spams per year). The best part is that I'm in control -- when someone continues to send annoying email even after being asked to stop (like our daughter's old childcare provider), I can add a Postfix rule to reject their mail at SMTP time and enjoy knowing that for every email they send, they'll get a Non-delivery report from their SMTP server complete with a personal message from me. Another example: an acquaintance liked to send mass mailers to everyone in his address book of the quality on par with most people's facebook/twitter status updates, followed by a barrage of useless replies from people I don't know. After realizing I never want to see those kinds of messages from anyone, I added a regex to Postfix header_checks to reject messages with more that 15 @ symbols in To: or Cc:. Another benefit of self hosting is unlimited temporary email aliases (e.g. temp123@example.com). Many places don't accept the standard myemail+temp123@example.com sub-address that gmail supports (and a spammer can easily identify), and it's nice to be able to tell when companies abuse my email.
- spc476 14y ago
  I have a GMail account but I don't use it. All I get is spam email. And yes, GMail finds a ton, but my inbox, which should be empty (or with very few emails from people thinking I'm someone I'm not) and it is not (granted, I only check once or twice a year, but I should not end up with over 100 messages in the inbox).
fusiongyro 14y ago
Email is hard because it is both architecturally insecure, and tremendously valuable to malicious attackers. It's hard because addressing its problems leads to buckets of different bad solutions rather than a single standard one. It's hard because the handful of big fish have decided that a reasonable way to combat its problems is to rely on interoperability with each other at the cost of you, the guy running mail. That said, as someone who does run mail, from my perspective it's more like the rest of the internet got easier and mail is still where it was a decade ago. Everything used to suck this much. With mail, the old hassles got addressed (goodbye sendmail and your m4 configuration nightmare) but got replaced with new hassles fast enough that it's kind of the same difference. But nowadays running the rest of your web stack (DNS, HTTP server, etc) is not very hard, though the cost of a DNS screwup is still huge.
acabal 14y ago
I've actually been thinking a lot about this in the past month. I too am transitioning away from Google-everything for various reasons. I only use Gmail via IMAP in Thunderbird, so I've already migrated my address book and calendar to self-hosted webDAV, which was shockingly easy. The last thing to switch over is Gmail. I used to run a mail server in the past so I know what a pain in the ass it is. I was thinking that something very useful would be some sort of big Bash script that would install and configure webDAV and a mail server using existing packages with smart defaults, specifically for individuals hosting their own personal mail. Kind of like an owncloud, but for address books/calendar/email and using existing packages. I'll see if I can think of this further once I actually sit down and start running my own mail server again. Anyone with thoughts or suggestions is welcomed to drop me a line :)

analog 14y ago

Gmail is the Wordpress of email surely?

gtz57 14y ago
Gmail isn't self-hosted or open source. He wasn't just saying both are popular. Unless you meant something else?
- analog 14y ago
  Wordpress and Gmail are both free and the market leaders. I'd bet that most people who use Wordpress don't care that it's open source, they just like the price and that it works well.

kennu 14y ago

Would you mind listing the high quality self hosted alternatives to Google Reader? I host my own email (Postfix+Dovecot on Ubuntu is pretty simple), and I might like to do it for RSS feeds, too.

brianwillis 14y ago
It looks like I'll be sticking with Fever[1]. The assigning-temperatures-to-posts thing seemed like a gimmick at first, but it actually works somewhat well, and you can ignore it if you want to. It also syncs with Reeder[2] on the iPhone/iPad which I've been using with Google Reader and am reluctant to part with. [1]: http://www.feedafever.com http://www.feedafever.com [2]: http://reederapp.com/ http://reederapp.com/
mnutt 14y ago
Newsblur is also open source: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur

groby_b 14y ago

Uh, thanks. I don't want the Wordpress of e-mail, at least not self-hosted. If you've ever run a WP site, you're well aware of the number of security fixes (and the insane number of attacks, if the site happens to be semi-popular) that go with it. That's why it's a significant undertaking - the setup is a one-time cost, but fighting to stay as secure as possible is an ongoing nightmare. [Edit: Not to diss WP here. I think they're doing a great job. It's the general problem of staying up-to-date re: patches]

jfoster 14y ago

Spam is one aspect of why email is hard, and having more than just a few email accounts on your host helps to tackle that problem. Take a look in your Gmail spam folder at how much they've managed to weed out.

brdrak 14y ago
I self host my personal email and have to use gmail at work. Spam is actually the one thing that I find gmail weaker at compared with self hosting. My nearly stock Postfix setup with a few basic anti-spam settings, rejects about 80% of spam. Then stock SpamAssassin config (with a nightly sa-update cron job) gets accuracy somewhere into the 90s. The SpamAssassin Bayes plugin takes it to very close to 100% (maybe 2 or 3 Spams per year). The best part is that I'm in control -- when someone continues to send annoying email even after being asked to stop (like our daughter's old childcare provider), I can add a Postfix rule to reject their mail at SMTP time and enjoy knowing that for every email they send, they'll get a Non-delivery report from their SMTP server complete with a personal message from me. Another example: an acquaintance liked to send mass mailers to everyone in his address book of the quality on par with most people's facebook/twitter status updates, followed by a barrage of useless replies from people I don't know. After realizing I never want to see those kinds of messages from anyone, I added a regex to Postfix header_checks to reject messages with more that 15 @ symbols in To: or Cc:. Another benefit of self hosting is unlimited temporary email aliases (e.g. temp123@example.com). Many places don't accept the standard myemail+temp123@example.com sub-address that gmail supports (and a spammer can easily identify), and it's nice to be able to tell when companies abuse my email.
spc476 14y ago
I have a GMail account but I don't use it. All I get is spam email. And yes, GMail finds a ton, but my inbox, which should be empty (or with very few emails from people thinking I'm someone I'm not) and it is not (granted, I only check once or twice a year, but I should not end up with over 100 messages in the inbox).

fusiongyro 14y ago

Email is hard because it is both architecturally insecure, and tremendously valuable to malicious attackers. It's hard because addressing its problems leads to buckets of different bad solutions rather than a single standard one. It's hard because the handful of big fish have decided that a reasonable way to combat its problems is to rely on interoperability with each other at the cost of you, the guy running mail. That said, as someone who does run mail, from my perspective it's more like the rest of the internet got easier and mail is still where it was a decade ago. Everything used to suck this much. With mail, the old hassles got addressed (goodbye sendmail and your m4 configuration nightmare) but got replaced with new hassles fast enough that it's kind of the same difference. But nowadays running the rest of your web stack (DNS, HTTP server, etc) is not very hard, though the cost of a DNS screwup is still huge.

acabal 14y ago

I've actually been thinking a lot about this in the past month. I too am transitioning away from Google-everything for various reasons. I only use Gmail via IMAP in Thunderbird, so I've already migrated my address book and calendar to self-hosted webDAV, which was shockingly easy. The last thing to switch over is Gmail. I used to run a mail server in the past so I know what a pain in the ass it is. I was thinking that something very useful would be some sort of big Bash script that would install and configure webDAV and a mail server using existing packages with smart defaults, specifically for individuals hosting their own personal mail. Kind of like an owncloud, but for address books/calendar/email and using existing packages. I'll see if I can think of this further once I actually sit down and start running my own mail server again. Anyone with thoughts or suggestions is welcomed to drop me a line :)