4 ms·

I'm not a sysadmin, but I'm a software engineer generally pretty comfortable doing ops stuff...and I'm pretty daunted by the thought of running my own email ser

by macNchz 12y ago

I'm not a sysadmin, but I'm a software engineer generally pretty comfortable doing ops stuff...and I'm pretty daunted by the thought of running my own email server. Beyond the setup(1), which isn't child's play, there's ongoing maintenance, possible issues with deliverability, security concerns, availability concerns (what if my server goes down while I'm off the grid on vacation and all my emails bounce for a week?). Basically it's an awful lot of effort for...not much reward, in my opinion. 1. http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/ http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/

Alupis 12y ago
you could just install Zimbra (on it's own box/vm) -- it's pretty maintenance free unless you require some custom configs. Just make sure you keep the OS updated, and when Zimbra has an update, do it quickly. you still will have to setup MX records and A records in DNS... but that's not too tough. Also you could get a backup MX service for like $10 a month to ensure you never bounce emails if you go down (you won't really bounce anything until after being down for 48 hours anyways, most email services will retry up to 48 hours then give up).
meowface 12y ago
For a personal mail server, it really isn't that hard and isn't much more work than setting up an HTTP server. Obviously if you're going to be a mail admin for an organization you'll need to put more work into it, but propping up postfix and some mail frontend on a personal server is pretty easy. No frontend you use will ever be as useful and simple as a big webmail provider's (like Gmail), but just ensuring successful delivery and receipt of mail really isn't that hard unless your server happens to be in some IP space with poor reputation. If it was that hard, email would be a lot more broken than it currently is.

4 ms·

I'm not a sysadmin, but I'm a software engineer generally pretty comfortable doing ops stuff...and I'm pretty daunted by the thought of running my own email ser

by macNchz 12y ago

Alupis 12y ago
you could just install Zimbra (on it's own box/vm) -- it's pretty maintenance free unless you require some custom configs. Just make sure you keep the OS updated, and when Zimbra has an update, do it quickly. you still will have to setup MX records and A records in DNS... but that's not too tough. Also you could get a backup MX service for like $10 a month to ensure you never bounce emails if you go down (you won't really bounce anything until after being down for 48 hours anyways, most email services will retry up to 48 hours then give up).
meowface 12y ago
For a personal mail server, it really isn't that hard and isn't much more work than setting up an HTTP server. Obviously if you're going to be a mail admin for an organization you'll need to put more work into it, but propping up postfix and some mail frontend on a personal server is pretty easy. No frontend you use will ever be as useful and simple as a big webmail provider's (like Gmail), but just ensuring successful delivery and receipt of mail really isn't that hard unless your server happens to be in some IP space with poor reputation. If it was that hard, email would be a lot more broken than it currently is.