Self-Hosted Main
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
For Example
- Service: Dropbox - Alternative: Nextcloud
- Service: Google Reader - Alternative: Tiny Tiny RSS
- Service: Blogger - Alternative: WordPress
We welcome posts that include suggestions for good self-hosted alternatives to popular online services, how they are better, or how they give back control of your data. Also include hints and tips for less technical readers.
Useful Lists
- Awesome-Selfhosted List of Software
- Awesome-Sysadmin List of Software
This is definitely the right answer.
Why not look into alternate methods of getting alerts? Like Gotify or ntfy?
After running my own server for a few years, I got tired of the maintenance. I used ProtonMail for a while, and I didn't mind using their app on my phone and the Bridge on my computer, but my parents kept forgetting to check and update it so Thunderbird would lose connectivity once in a while.
I have since migrated to Infomaniak. It's based in Switzerland as well, you can use your own domain and it's cheap (€1.50 per month for 5 addresses with unlimited storage). I haven't tried their smartphone app (I use the one from Apple on my iPhone), but I've heard good things about it.
Infomaniak
Wow, I've never heard about this one before. Thanks, I'll check it out!
Little spoken about, but the one I use is postale.io. Found it to be reliable and cheap!
Looks intresting; thank you! I'll check that out.
i have been using fastmail for about a year now, never had any issues with smtp delays or mails not showing up in 'sent'
i also use protonmail. for smtp (or any 3rd party client) you need to upgrade your account and install the bridge. this is because you need something to handle pgp.
I’m using Zoho after years and years of self hosting. Never looked back :) I’m on the free account wish my custom domain btw.
Zoho has been solid for me as well.
Infomaniak kMail 👍🏻. Based in Swiss, so very good data privacy protection.
Im going to use protonmail for my next domain im looking into getting (when i come up with a name for it :D)
Custom domains
sub-accounting or what its called, aliasing in email like gmail.. [email protected] so you can tag and see where spam and such comes from (who sold/leaked your email?)
Proton mail have both imap and smtp available
I use a combination on ProtonMail and Mailgun. I only have a few automated messages going out with mailgun a month so it's essentially free. I also started using mattermost as a notification channel for different things as well. It has the same API as slack, so you can hook it up to pretty much anything you can hook slack up to.
- Google Workspace. Not the cheapest, and also by Google (although they claim they don't mine as much data from business accounts)
- Zoho, $1.25/mo
- iCloud+, $0.99/mo, but a bit limited (don't remember whether they have catch-all etc).
Migadu, dirt cheap and reliable (using it since 2018)
Exchange Online
I self host Mailu and don't have issues with it being blocked... If it's configured correctly you won't have issues.
I've thought about creating a blog on how to build it but haven't. Any interest in this?
I self host too, using modoboa The issue with many VPS is they block outgoing port 25 Cant selfhost at home because ISP didnt give public ip For now im just relay outgoing via sendgrid
Just curious why not go with gmail business?
I use a provider called Imageway (), and they seem to offer really good email hosting. They are non-Microsoft based, and offer just about every major open email based protocol (IMAP, POP, SMTP, CalDAV, CardDAV) available. They also have features you won't find anywhere else like support for 2FA that works with IMAP/POP. Lastly they don't charge per email account like most of the other providers listed, instead they use a shared storage concept.
Brevo formerly sendinblue, free plan will be enough for sending transactional emails using smtp or api. 300 emails per day on free plan.
I am using smtp2go to send out emails from my own services. The free plan allows 1k emails per month.
You can set up your domain and it sends fine.
For my own mail I use Fastmail and it is great. If the smtp from apps is the only issue then smtp2go might be solution?
How about lark suite, I haven't tried, but have been meaning to, I'd you're happy with Gmail, Zoho, I'd say it's equivalent.
I like infomaniak with their UI, although if you are not in Europe it's hard to sign up and I'd love to finally sign up to purely mail, but Cloudflare email forwarding covers what I need.
Here's an outdated list. https://www.reddit.com/r/gsuitelegacymigration/s/xsimVL9oJA
MXroute
MXroute has just released their Black Friday offer
https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/190301/mxroute-black-friday-2023-email-hosting-that-spammers-crave-but-cant-have/
It would be remiss of me to not point out that up until somewhat recently they had a gaping wide security hole (for presumably years) that allowed any customer to send email as any other and fully pass their spf and dkim checks (due to shared keys and having no way of ensuring their users could only send mail from domains under their own account).
When this was disclosed they abused the reporter, kicked him off their service without giving him time to back up his mail, tried to discredit him, lied that their bad practices were commonplace throughout the industry (narrator: they weren't) before finally going around removing all traces of the discussion. I was lucky(?) enough to see the reddit side of it as it unfolded and I've never seen such pseduo-tech bullshit being thrown around and well as nasty attacks on the reporter.
So yeah, they're cheap but they also seem pretty poor technically (or at least were) and seem like horrible people. YMMV of course.
Beware that they allow a maximum outbound of 300 mails/hour. In case your "update notifications" etc. are exceeding this limit.