Host your own Mail Server, is it a good idea?

one of my first videos i released on this channel was a tutorial about how to set up a mail server on linux in just about 10 minutes and this video is still running on my channel and although it has a really terrible quality is still my most viewed video on the channel with about 50 000 views which is completely crazy but it also shows me that a lot of you guys are searching for running a self-hosted mail server on linux and want to know how to do that but well i thought i should address it somehow because i recently switched from my own self-hosted mail server solution with mailcow to a software as a service product which is called microsoft 365. so in this video let's talk about what were the reasons why i made this switch and whether it makes sense to run yourself or submit server and in which cases you probably should not do it hey everyone this is christian and i create tutorials and content for id professionals so if you want to learn more about linux devops programming and cyber security then please don't forget to hit the like button and of course subscribe to the channel and if you start searching for some resources and tutorials on how to set up your own mail server on linux you will quickly find out that mail servers are quite complex and this is because a mate server is not a single application that you can just download and run on your server in fact a mail server consists of many different services applications and protocols that all need to work perfectly together to give you a fully fleshed mail server experience and yeah that alone is probably a good reason why a lot of people should not run their own salesforce email servers but i believe as it professionals if we have some basic understanding about dns records and how to set up and maintain linux servers you can definitely do this there's nothing wrong with running a cell phones that made server don't let anybody tell you it should be too complex in fact i've made a tutorial on how to set up a mate server with docker docker compose and mako in just about 10 minutes on linux so although this video has a really terrible quality you can still watch it and follow it along if you really want to know how to set up your own self-hosted mail server then i've put your link in the description down below check it out so yeah i believe the technical hurdles are probably not the biggest reason why you should not try to run your self-hosted mate server anyone can learn anything but there are still some implications that always come along with self-hosting and a lot of good reasons why you should consider not doing this and for me personally this was a major reason why i stopped using this self-hosted mail server and switched to assess product with microsoft 365 and this is when you're doing self-hosting you're fully responsible for all the uptime and for the infrastructure and for maintaining and monitoring your server because you cannot just set up a mail server and just assume this is running forever you need to consistently monitor your server if it is running out of storage if there are any hardware problems that can occur if you have a power outage or your internet connection goes down or there are other problems with your operating system and for me email is really a business critical feature once i started to run my youtube channel i also wanted to have my own domain thedigitallive.com where i am hosting my websites and also want to receive emails from any partner companies business inquiries or sometimes i also do some freelancing work and therefore i cannot really afford to lose any email email is really business critical to me and i didn't just want to maintain my own server anymore because it was just consuming too much time and i would just like to spend this time more on projects that i can make more money with than just invest this time into troubleshooting issues on my servers or maintaining this stuff but you're not just responsible for all the technical problems and maintaining and monitoring the server you are also responsible for the whole security concept of your server and you really need to ask yourself this question are you able to provide the same level of security as compared to assessed products where there is a dedicated team of security architects doing manual threat hunting port by machine learning algorithms and enterprise security products well probably you cannot so instead of running my own self-hosted solution i just decided to pay like five dollars a month to microsoft and let these guys do everything but when we talk about providers like microsoft and google isn't there a really big problem with data control and privacy well i would say it really depends because if you're using microsoft 365 for example you get an exchange server that is running in the cloud and you can configure this server you can set up policies security rules and connect all your external domains to the server and you get a little bit of control over this server and how to set up this but of course you don't get the overall control of running a mail server you don't get the control over the infrastructure and where the data is stored of course with the self-host email server you have all your emails stored on your infrastructure and they are not stored in the cloud but once you send out an email you don't really know what's happening with this email once it left your server you don't even know if all the connections between your email client and the recipient email clients are encrypted and secured you also don't know where these emails are stored and processed on the recipient side once you've sent out this mail so therefore i believe there's just one viable option for secure and private email communication and this is end-to-end encryption with pgp so because there are so many unknown components and unpredictable things that are involved into email communication that are out of your control anyway i believe it is not really good argument to say your emails are just secured and private because you're running a self-hosted mail server by the way if you're interested in a more privacy focused provider i can strongly recommend protonmail to you this is a swiss company that probably respects your privacy even a little bit more than big companies like microsoft or google so this is also a good alternative option you can definitely use but there's still one big reason why i believe running a self-hosted mail server can make a lot of sense and this is because the learning aspect is just amazing and incredible so this is also the reason why i really don't regret running my self-hosted mate solution with mako for quite some time because i learned so much from this project this got me started with docker docker compose and make use of all these amazing technologies and yeah this is really a cool solution you can learn so much from setting up a mail server as an it professional and yeah because every company is using email this is a valuable skill that you can teach yourself so if you just learn about dns records how mx records are working how spf how dicam or denmark is working and all this stuff and learn about basic protocols like imap smtp and maybe take a look at how to protect yourself hosted mail server you can learn so many cool things and therefore i think it can make a lot of sense to run a self-hosted mail server maybe for a proof of concept or for a testing environment so seriously this probably is the biggest argument for self-hosting because the learning aspect is just amazing so let's do a little recap here guys what is my general advice to you should you go and run your self-hosted mail server or should you not do it well i hope i gave you enough information to make that decision on your own because i believe it really depends so if you are someone who is interested in learning about how mail servers work and if you want to take the burden of trouble shooting issues or setting up all this stuff then just go and run a self-hosted mail server with mako there's no reason why you should not do it but if mail is really business critical to you and you don't want to spend time troubleshooting any problems you just need an operational server all the time then i believe running a self-hosted mail server is just taking too much time and too much effort compared to what you need to pay for a good sas product and that's it so just go make your thoughts and make your decision and please let me know in the comments which image solution are you using are you using an email provider or are you running your own self-hosted mail server solution it would be really interesting for me to know and yeah if you want to see more tutorials and content for itunes professionals and if you enjoyed and like this video please don't forget to hit the like button it always helps my channel grow and of course subscribe okay guys i hope you enjoyed this video and you could learn something and yeah take care everyone i hope i'll see you soon bye bye

Channel: Christian Lempa

Views: 146,130

Keywords: host your own mail server, host your own domain, host your own email server, mail server linux, mail server linux ubuntu, hosting mail server, how to make your own host server, free email server

Id: Q-E6ljN3eG0

Length: 8min 26sec (506 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021