Recent and related:

After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32715437 - Sept 2022 (628 comments)

Self-hosted email is the hardest it's ever been, but also the easiest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720234 - Sept 2022 (154 comments)

The link to part 3 from part 2 is broken (but the one in ToC works).

It doesn't mention reverse DNS (PTR for *.in-addr.arpa) records. Though not strictly necessary, but doesn't harm to have those set, and the author's mail server has those set.

Looks nice overall. The notable differences from how I set those are the lack of postscreen (including its greylisting), of a dedicated submission port, of SRV DNS records (_submission._tcp, _imap._tcp, _imaps._tcp), but presence/use of virtual hosts and users, and of OpenDMARC. Maybe I should try using the latter, though not sure how useful it is (whether it's worth the slight complication of the overall setup), when set on a small/low-traffic mail server.

why do you need SRV records for submission,imap and imaps? Are there email clients who make use of those?

Not sure about the support in mail clients (I mostly use mu4e with mbsync, I don't think they can look those up), and they certainly aren't required. But I set them anyway, along those for XMPP (where they should be set), and it's potentially useful. Similarly to setting TLSA, SSHFP, CAA records: those are rarely used, but they do seem nice to me, and it shouldn't harm to provide clients with such an option. Also the more servers provide it, the more motivation there is for clients to support it.

why do you need to develop SRV record support in email clients? are there email providers who publish SRV records?

it's like why do servers/clients need to support IPv6 if there are few clients/servers doing it :)

If anyone decides to make a docker-compose file that can do all this with a click, please share.

My list[0] being discussed on HN as well[1]:

- maddy (https://github.com/foxcpp/maddy) (this is my personal favorite, I'm running at least 6 instances right now)

- chasquid (https://blitiri.com.ar/p/chasquid/)

- mailu (https://github.com/Mailu/Mailu)

- mailinabox (https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox)

- mailcow (https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized)

- docker-mailserver (https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver)

- Postal (https://docs.postalserver.io/) (more for API driven email apps)

- Haraka (https://haraka.github.io/) (SMTP only) - Combine with [WildDuck](https://wildduck.email/)?

[0]: https://vadosware.io/post/its-never-been-easier-or-harder-to...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720234

I've setup mailu recently and can vouch for it's relative simplicity of setup and operation, including instructions for various of the verification types.

Hosting from home has been working for me, pending my network and homelab dramas. I haven't had trouble getting email to Microsoft or Gmail addresses

The caveat is that I don't self host my primary email address. I was going to be migrating it off Google, but they backed off enough to allow non-commercial gsuite users to remain free - and I don't want to close a door that I can't open again.

I have not used it, but might also be of interest:

https://modoboa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

I've also toyed with the idea of trying dbmail for a long time: https://dbmail.org/

There is also iredmail: https://www.iredmail.org/

Appreciate it, I updated the article but can't update on HN anymore. I realized I left it out a little while ago[0].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32720837

Sortof i guess https://mailcow.email/