email service for a private domain!

[Mayuresh Kathe]

i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.

i have no idea about what is involved and don't know what the search for
via google.

could i be pointed in the right direction?

also, how do i evaluate hosting service providers?
i only know of rootbsd and digitalocean.

thanks.

[Arthur Chance]

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.
i have no idea about what is involved and don't know what the search for
via google.
could i be pointed in the right direction?

If you don't know what's involved, I'd strongly suggest that you don't
try to do it yourself, otherwise you could find yourself and your domain
blacklisted as a spammer if you accidentally left your MTA open for
relaying.

Instead you'd be better off looking for a mail hosting service that
supports private domains. Most competent ISPs can do that, otherwise you
might want to look at an independent service provider like Mythic Beasts
(https://www.mythic-beasts.com/) - my wife and various friends use them
for mail and DNS as they're a local (to us) company.

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
also, how do i evaluate hosting service providers?
i only know of rootbsd and digitalocean.

The big three are AWS, Google Compute Engine and Azure, with
AlibabaCloud catching up with them. Other smaller providers are
VULTR.com, CloudSigma, OVH, Atlantic.net. I can't say how good any of
them are, I usually run servers in house, but I'm sure others round here
have experience of using them.

[Stephen R Guglielmo]

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.
i have no idea about what is involved and don't know what the search for
via google.
could i be pointed in the right direction?

I ran my own email system on a domain I own for a few years. It is a _lot_
of work to set it correctly and maintain it.

I ran the postfix MTA, Dovecot for imap, OpenDKIM for DKIM signing,
postfix-policyd-spf-python for SPF verification, and finally ClamAv for
virus scanning.

I may be forgetting a few things in the mix as well. You definitely need a
static IP address. It's may be a bit outdated, but I did write a guide on
this: https://guglielmo.us/cs/postfix.html

A mail server typically has to be running (correctly) for a long time in
order to build up domain authority as a valid email server. Otherwise,
ougoing email will often be marked as spam.

Having said all that, unless you have a lot of time and motivation to
learn, I do recommend that you use a paid service/company to host your
email. I have since switched from running my own to ProtonMail for my
custom domain and I'm very happy with them.

Thanks,
Steve

[John Levine]

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.

It's much easier to leave your mail hosted at gandi and use fetchmail
to copy incoming messages to your BSD box so you can read them there.
It's in the ports.

[Kurt Buff]

I assume that you have someone hosting your DNS zone. That's the
easiest alternative. I wouldn't dive into hosting your own DNS.

You will need, at a mimimum, the following:

You will need a static address for your host from your ISP (or if you
are colocating your server, from them), and you will also require a
PTR record for your host, entered into the zone of whoever grants you
the static address.

Your DNS zone will need to list the A (and/or AAAA) record for your
host, and an MX record.

You will also want an SPF record in your zone, and should explore the
idea of implementing DMARC/DKIM.

After that is configured, you'll need to configure the software for
your mail server. I suggest using postfix, in conjunction with a good
IMAP server. There are several.

I'd also recommend that you subscribe to the postfix email list, and
start asking questions there - after you've read the documentation.

There are alternatives to postfix (I've used and loathed sendmail, a
very long time ago), but postfix is the one that seemed best developed
to me, and I was most comfortable with it. YMMV.

I'd also suggest setting up an anti-spam filter. For my $dayjob
several years ago, I put up MAIA Mailguard, and it worked very well.
It packages spamassassin and several other things into a very nice
filter, but it might be overkill if you are only doing mail for
yourself.

I no longer use postfix/spamassassin or other OSS tools for email, so
can't comment much further - $dayjob has implemented commercial
alternatives for all of that.

HTH,

Kurt

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.
i have no idea about what is involved and don't know what the search for
via google.
could i be pointed in the right direction?
also, how do i evaluate hosting service providers?
i only know of rootbsd and digitalocean.
thanks.
_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

[Peter Boosten]

I run my own domain for years now and you definitely don’t need a static address. I’ve a registration at dyndns.com and my mx record points to that address. Works like charm.

I forward my email through my provider (smart host) and receive directly.

You have to take care of spam yourself, but a combination of amavis, spam assassin, clamav and greylisting works wonderful.

My MTA is postfix, my IMAP server is courier, and my certificates are from Let’s Encrypt.

Peter

Post by Kurt Buff
I assume that you have someone hosting your DNS zone. That's the
easiest alternative. I wouldn't dive into hosting your own DNS.
You will need a static address for your host from your ISP (or if you
are colocating your server, from them), and you will also require a
PTR record for your host, entered into the zone of whoever grants you
the static address.
Your DNS zone will need to list the A (and/or AAAA) record for your
host, and an MX record.
You will also want an SPF record in your zone, and should explore the
idea of implementing DMARC/DKIM.
After that is configured, you'll need to configure the software for
your mail server. I suggest using postfix, in conjunction with a good
IMAP server. There are several.
I'd also recommend that you subscribe to the postfix email list, and
start asking questions there - after you've read the documentation.
There are alternatives to postfix (I've used and loathed sendmail, a
very long time ago), but postfix is the one that seemed best developed
to me, and I was most comfortable with it. YMMV.
I'd also suggest setting up an anti-spam filter. For my $dayjob
several years ago, I put up MAIA Mailguard, and it worked very well.
It packages spamassassin and several other things into a very nice
filter, but it might be overkill if you are only doing mail for
yourself.
I no longer use postfix/spamassassin or other OSS tools for email, so
can't comment much further - $dayjob has implemented commercial
alternatives for all of that.
HTH,
Kurt

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.
i have no idea about what is involved and don't know what the search for
via google.
could i be pointed in the right direction?
also, how do i evaluate hosting service providers?
i only know of rootbsd and digitalocean.
thanks.
_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

_______________________________________________
https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions

[FBUser]

Post by Mayuresh Kathe
i own a domain (kathe.in) which i would like to setup for mail services.
essentially, i should be able to log-in over ssh and work through my
emails using mailx.
...
could i be pointed in the right direction?
also, how do i evaluate hosting service providers?
i only know of rootbsd and digitalocean.

As others have mentioned, it's a nontrivial amount of setup,
that a third party would be happy to do for you. I would
recommend FastMail.

At its simplest, receiving email is easy. You need to configure
an MTA (sendmail, postfix, exim, ...) to know it should receive
email for your domain, then you need to point the MX record in
DNS to that server. A small domain might even manage adequately
without spam filtering, but setting up ClamAV and SpamAssassin
is well covered by online tutorials. (Search for "setting up
spamassassin" plus the name of the MTA you're using.) You may
use the default local delivery agent, which will probably drop
messages into /var/mail. Or you might want something more
featureful like procmail or sieve. If you want to be able to
retrieve email remotely (e.g. via IMAP) that's another set of
things to configure, but you only asked about local access.

Sending email is more work (if you want it to be read). In
today's environment you will need to set up SPF, which
advertises in DNS who can send mail for your domain. SPF is not
enough anymore, though. You also need to set up DKIM, which
cryptographically verifies certain headers in your outgoing
email against a public key published in DNS. You also need to
ensure you have "sender alignment", which matches MAIL FROM with
From: with your SPF and DKIM records. Then you need to publish a
policy called DMARC in DNS to describe your mail practices. You
probably want that policy to include reporting of failures, at
least initially. All that effort will be for naught if you do
not restrict who can send mail through your server to just
authorized users by appropriately configuring your MTA.

You might look at packaged do-it-yourself solutions like
https://mailinabox.email/, for guidance if not also actual
implementation.

As for where to host, reputation matters. In my experience
reputation and cost are proportional. Lots of email providers
outright block email from all of DigitalOcean's IP space,
because they're the lowest-cost provider and therefore
the largest source of problems, with high IP turnover.
Similarly, residential IPs -- or things providers sometimes
mistakenly think are residential IPs -- are blocked. I've not
heard of too much trouble with RackSpace/RootBSD.

Good luck!