Hi all,
I have had several shots at self hosting email over the years and my last attempt failed due to my home IP being in a dynamic pool. I thought I might try again, this time with a basic web hosting provider that I could set up email on. Any suggestions for a free/cheap provider with decent uptime?
Thanks
All cheap/shared IP providers would be equally terrible trying to have a good reputation.
I’ve had good luck on a couple of cheap providers. I think a lot of them block port 25 by default, unless you ask, which maybe gives you a better chance. Plus DKIM and stuff are starting to help. There’s probably always some stupid mail server that will block huge swaths of IPv4 if somebody farts in the neighborhood, but I think the situation is improving.
Proton Mail is cheap. I think I paid $40 for a year and you get a bunch more stuff in addition to mail and a custom mail domain.
I use Purelymail for my primary domain’s smtp and imap server. As long as you don’t use it for nefarious purposes like automated emails, then you should be fine. My primary use is to hook it into my services such as Vaultwarden, my uptime monitors (Uptime Kuma and StatPing) and Watchtower, so maybe less than 100 per month on it. They don’t seem to mind. They have great support via Discord and it’s been close to 1.5 years I think that I’ve been with them, no downtime.
Yeah that is my current mail provider but the self hosting bug bites deep
I have had pretty good experience with hosting an email server on AlphaVPS, InceptionHosting and just now GreenCloudVPS.
GreenCloudVPS currently have a promotion until Sunday, and there are usually promotions around Black Friday on LowEndSpirit and LowEndTalk
I fully understand. :)
For hosting providers, you can always scout out deals on lowendbox.com or webhostingtalk.com, especially this time of year where black Friday deals are coming. Then, install something like HestiaCP (https://hesticp.com) and it will take care of the rest of the stuff like email and site hosting. Plus - with a VPS, you get a shiny new static IP you can use. :)
If you don’t want a site, that’s easy enough, just make an empty index.html page so if a curious email recipient wants to visit your site based on your email’s domain, they just get a blank page and move on.
Either that - go with a well known hosting provider which does basic cPanel hosting with low disk space.
I’ve never dared going the route of setting up an e-mail server at home mostly because of having a dynamic IP which rotates often enough to cause problems.
I’d say don’t self host mail. Just use protonmail or something. You probably don’t want to hear that but you’ll just end up with something less reliable, less features and you’ll have to spend sma lot of time on it
Most budget web hosts are going to score you a pretty spam score - the private antispam feed we use at work has “originates at a digital ocean ASN” as an automatic grey list unless it’s for a domain with an existing reputation
Just configure your outbound SMTP to use sendgrid or some other. SMTP provider. I realized this isn’t 100% self housing then, but you could still self host the inbound mail. Self housing outbound SMTP just isn’t worth it for most people IMHO due to spam lists.
