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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the ask-SoylentNews dept.

I would like to ask my fellow soylentists... What do you do for an email solution?

For almost 20 years, I have had my own personal domains along with corresponding websites, email, and any other needed service. As I am older now, I no longer need any of the visibility of my own website; I do not need it for getting new jobs, or to host any application or service. However, I still need email. My current ISP has annoyed me with rising fees and a lack of any service (not surprisingly, it went downhill really fast once their business was merged with another.)

So, I am looking to drop everything except the actual domains and the email, (not to mention change providers.) What solutions does everyone else use? Are you happy with your provider?

The biggest feature I am looking for is some type of "catchall" email address. While I realize this means a lot more spam, I am already filtering the 99% of that out. For years, I have created many single use email addresses for various websites. (e.g. keyword@mydomain.xxx ) IMO, this creates better security, because anyone trying to access my accounts need to know the email address I used as well as the password, and I also find out which websites sell my email address to others or get breached. It seems that the majority of sites do not have this simple feature anymore.

Due to my multiple handles, most of the simple email sites will not work for me. Not to mention sites that charge per email handle are not very good either. While I can consolidate with a catch-all address, this is not a preferred method.

I prefer POP3 so that I can have multiple devices access my email and webmail is a plus but not required.

So does anyone know of a email site that will fit my needs? Or is my best chance to create my own email server on a linode VPS? (Though I would prefer a simple premade solution instead of maintaining my own server at this point.)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:15AM (1 child)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:15AM (#880015) Homepage

    Rent a VPS. They are literally pence per month if you're not using much.
    Point the domain MX records at it.
    Install postfix / postgrey.
    Have it forward your email to - well, whatever you want. GMail, Hotmail, anything convenient, or install Dovecot and collect directly.

    In my case it forwards to an ancient GMail account (from the days of having to be invited to get one), but it also saves locally which is collected over IMAP.

    But when something happens, I have control... I have two inboxes with the same content. I have the capability to properly block email that I don't want (and I use a unique alias@mydomain.com for everything I sign up for). I can forward email to any destination (e.g. I forward some aliases for family and friends to their accounts) and on a moment's notice, and I can just keep pointing more domains at it.

    The config isn't difficult and tends to stay pretty static unless I'm tinkering. It's very portable if some VPS provider pees me off. And I can move it to any server if I really cared.

    I used to pay for forwarding/email etc. but inevitably you just don't have the same control and the config is never portable between providers.

    And with proper greylisting, querying of SBL, etc. nothing bad gets through. I even reject aliases that have been released into the wild permanently (many providers get hacked and your email ends up on the spam lists, so I just block the whole alias).

    It's a day of maintenance a year, if that, and that tends to be tinkering rather than "OMG, everyone is blocking all my email and I have to radically change the way I work".

    Never forget - with email, your server can be down for hours if necessary... the other mail servers will catch it all back up.

    Just don't try and do it off a dynamic IP address or home ISP IP range, because everyone else will ignore you. VPS or dedicated server.

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  • (Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Wednesday August 14 2019, @11:53AM

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Wednesday August 14 2019, @11:53AM (#880090)

    I have two email domains. I set up one using https://mailinabox.email [mailinabox.email] and it's almost zero work to maintain.

    For the other one, I used the directions at https://skrilnetz.net/setup-your-own-mailserver/ [skrilnetz.net] - though sadly they are now a bit out of date. It took me a few days to get that working because I think the DNS instructions are incomplete. But since then it's been effortless to maintain.