Jan-Lukas Else

Tech, life and everything else

Self-hosting my emails again

Published on 2025-02-05 in 💭 Thoughts

Short link: https://b.jlel.se/s/7d3

⚠️ This entry is already over one year old. It may no longer be up to date. Opinions may have changed.

After three years with Purelymail, I’m back at self-hosting my mail server. Not because it’s cheaper (it’s actually much pricier to pay for a VPS), but because my mails are now hosted in Europe (who knows what happens next in the USA), I have more control to configure things how I want, and I can comply with GDPR.

This time, I decided to use docker-mailserver (boring setup with Postfix + Dovecot + Rspamd with Abusix Guardian Mail + ClamAV) running on a Fedora CoreOS VPS at Hetzner in their Finland data center.

First, I migrated just a few domains to see if everything was working, checked with various tools all the security mechanisms:

And today, I migrated my main domain and copied all mails using imapsync.

Tags: Email

Interactions & Comments

Jan-Lukas Else Self-hosting my emails again: A few weeks in A few weeks ago, I moved back to self-hosting my mail server after using Purelymail for three years. The decision wasn’t about cost – it’s actually more expensive to rent a VPS – but about control, security, and data locality. My mails are now hosted in Europe, giving me more confidence in their privacy, and I can configure everything exactly as I want while ensuring compliance with GDPR. I originally self-hosted my mail server during my student days. Back then, I enjoyed experimenting and tw…
- Tim I've self-hosted in the past. I enjoyed it but always worry about failures on my behalf. I use Proton now. But maybe three different times I've run a mail-in-a-box server. You do have me wondering about it again. I do fear something catastrophic happening, thats why I tend to pass the responsibility off.
- jwb I was wondering, do you encrypt the drive on your VPS or do you trust your hoster?
- starrwulfe @jlelse preach! On of very few positives in this new clim… @jlelse preach! On of very few positives in this new climate is some of the side work I’ve been getting via word of mouth to set people up with home NAS’ and small VPS configuration just like this.
- Rutger Do you know how sending is going? I am mostly thinking about domains that are managed by one of the Microsoft offerings... I know that mail often ends up in Junk.
- Jan-Lukas Else Earlier this year, I used Purelymail until I switched back to a self-hosted email server. Today, I found out that Purelymail was sold shortly after I closed my account due to health reasons. The new owner has pledged to continue the service in the same spirit as its founder, who always provided excellent support when I needed it. My reason for switching wasn’t due to any dissatisfaction with Purelymail; I simply wanted more control and to host my data in Europe again. I wish Purelymail all th…
- Jan-Lukas Else I migrated to Nextcloud, not OpenCloud Just last week I wrote that I am ready to switch from OneDrive to OpenCloud. But things have changed a bit since then. Hetzner announced a price increase, and I just ordered a new service from them: Storage Share powered by Nextcloud. So instead of switching to OpenCloud, I switched to Nextcloud. Honestly, I don’t want to care about self-hosting my files. I just want easy-to-use, European, and trustworthy online storage for my personal files. With an app to automatically back up the photos fr…
numbleroot I'm curious, why did you choose Hetzner's Finland location for hosting your mail server?
- Jan-Lukas Else From what I read they are using more green energy there and I think it's good to have the mail server in another location than my VPS for other things.