I had the same email address from my ISP for 25 years.

We moved from San Antonio to Alpharetta Georgia a few years ago and had to choose a different provider so new email address. AT&T ISP 1 Gig fiber was great but they use Yahoo email.

Moved back to Texas last year so another ISP...

Screw that, I registered my own domain and am now using O365 email registered to my domain.

I have other email accounts I use for junk (gmail & yahoo). I did not bother creating an account from my current ISP.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:

Yeah, I'd definitely go with the fixed IP business plan and I have no issues building a server and installing postfix. I just don't know what I'm doing with security and preventing getting blacklisted.

Nice to see you are already thinking Postfix. For my money, it is the most supportable and solid MX platform. Consider Cyrus-IMAP for your mailbox provisioning, its biggest plus is that mail accounts are not mapped to Unix logins making setting up a host of user accounts a lot less of a pain. There are people who will push you to Dovecot, it isn't terrible, but Maildir message storage can be difficult to work with outside the mail system, the Cyrus one-file-per-message is much more intuitive if you ever have to do anything in a mail folder from the command line.

Sounds like you're set on a machine or VM at home for this? An AWS instance or suchlike can also work acceptably, and you are in an address space that is not automatically suspect (many mail exchangers discredit ISP end-site netblocks whether or not they are "residential"). I would also consider fronting your Postfix server with ASSP on a separate VM to reduce some of the SPAM.

Before you start building out a system, I'd suggest creating and documenting the design, doing so in a medium that will allow you to document-as-you-go to track the various decision points you will traverse in the design, build, and configure process. Perhaps in the form of a web-based wiki. Unless you are far better than I am you will not remember why you chose each and every option in a configuration file and, e.g., why you chose to roll your own crypto keys and certificates rather than pay a commercial CA for them.

I use my ISP for email. Any email I receive from gmail goes right to the junk folder due to the shear amount of spam coming at me from gmail accounts.

My ISP, Centurylink. Never a problem or issue in over 10yrs that comes to mind. Thunderbird on my Linux computers.

Can set up multiple accounts with Centurylink and have never had any email account other than an ISP. If corresponding with something that seems hanky, possibly risky or just because I don't want to give out my primary addy, I just create and use a toss-away email account with my ISP.

 
My domain registrar (OpenSRS) provides basic email services. Since my domains are already integrated there, I can make email addresses and aliases on any of my domain names.

reagan.com

Almost everything is moved over to Proton, also am using O365 and still have gmail for junk.

I am also getting rid of gmail and switching to proton. I am trying to divest myself of google, amazon, and apple. It takes a while as I didn’t realize how much is tied to your email account.

I use AOL, gmail, And an old SBCGlobal.net hosted by Yahoo now.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
What would a consultation cost to help someone setup and secure a home email server?

Probably well more than you'll want to spend. You see: I really don't like doing this anymore. That's why I retired I do mine because I can and because I really don't trust anybody else. I do consulting for one of my best friends because he's one of my best friends.

I'd be happy to answer whatever questions I can, however.

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
Yeah, I'd definitely go with the fixed IP business plan...

You kinda sorta have to if you want to run a legitimate email server. You can do it with dynamic DNS, but many ISPs block port 25 inbound on "residential" service and many mail servers won't accept email from known dynamic IP address space. (Mine is one of them.)

quote:

Originally posted by mark123:
... and I have no issues building a server and installing postfix. I just don't know what I'm doing with security and preventing getting blacklisted.

Postfix is secure out of the box. So no problem there.

You'll also want an IMAP server and a mechanism for setting up secure logins. There are various solutions. I use Dovecot.

You may also wish to look into implementing SPF and DKIM. (However, for DKIM to be fully functional I believe you also need signed DNS zones, which is a whole 'nother issue. [I also serve my own DNS.])

It all sounds complicated. And it is. The good news is the stuff is all well-known and mostly stable. So there's lots of knowledgeable help available, incl. READMEs and FAQs and the like. Plus once you get it running it'll tend to need little intervention... until the first time you have to upgrade the entire server, that is

hotmail.com
aol.com
sbcglobal.net

I mostly check my e-mail accounts on my iPhone so there isn't any difference between them. When I do open them up on a computer, I like hotmail the best after all of these years.

I like the idea of moving away from Gmail. But I guess it's futile for me, no?... I've been using them since Feb 2006. 15 years.... I suspect they know all there is to know about me now.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
You may also wish to look into implementing SPF and DKIM. (However, for DKIM to be fully functional I believe you also need signed DNS zones, which is a whole 'nother issue. [I also serve my own DNS.])

When I used to run my own smtp server (outbound only) on FreeBSD, I used Postfix. I have a good static IP from my ISP ("good" in the sense that prior users of the IP address did not abuse email and get the IP blacklisted. IP address "reputation" is a major consideration in running your own mail server). Anyway, on FreeBSD with Postfix, I always signed outgoing emails with DKIM, and it does not require signed DNS zones. I also use SPF.
 
For a variety of reasons (partly to make things easier for my wife should something happen to me), I finally tore down my FreeBSD box and moved the services it provided (DNS, DHCP, NTP) to my Mikrotik router. I am now using Postfix on macOS for my own outgoing mail, but so far I have been unable to compile OpenDKIM on macOS. The problem seems to be a recognized one, in compiling the required dependent expat on macOS.
 
macOS comes with Postfix already installed. To make it a functional smtp server requires editing a few lines in its .plist file in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, and of course editing main.cf and master.cf in the Postfix directory.
 
Incoming mail goes to my Domain registrar's email service.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
... until the first time you have to upgrade the entire server, that is

Oh, I've learned that lesson. There is no way I'm upgrading my FreeNAS to TrueNAS until I get a second one running off-site.

Thanks for the tips and I'll eventually give it a go on a VM. I just purchased a 3 year hosting service so I'll probably run the DNS from there until I can get everything to the home servers. I'm a bit concerned about firewall rules and all that. I'm going to learn more about pfsense next.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
Anyway, on FreeBSD with Postfix, I always signed outgoing emails with DKIM, and it does not require signed DNS zones.

I didn't say it required it. I said it won't be "fully functional." Lacking a signed zone, DKIM authentication will show up with things like:

Authentication-Results: host.example.com; dkim=pass
 reason="1024-bit key; unprotected key"
 header.d=example.net header.i=@example.net header.b=Rl/tHEtZ;
 dkim-adsp=pass; dkim-atps=neutral

See the "unprotected key", above?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:
Anyway, on FreeBSD with Postfix, I always signed outgoing emails with DKIM, and it does not require signed DNS zones.

I didn't say it required it. I said it won't be "fully functional." Lacking a signed zone, DKIM authentication will show up with things like:

Authentication-Results: host.example.com; dkim=pass
 reason="1024-bit key; unprotected key"
 header.d=example.net header.i=@example.net header.b=Rl/tHEtZ;
 dkim-adsp=pass; dkim-atps=neutral

See the "unprotected key", above?

 
Isn't that just the public key in the DNS record? What could someone do with that key if they obtained it from an unsigned zone (honest question)?

Just started a ProtonMail account

quote:

Originally posted by lkdr1989:
Almost everything is moved over to Proton, also am using O365 and still have gmail for junk.

This, my wife and I both moved to proton but I kept gmail for junk and old contacts I have not moved over...not as usable as gmail but getting better...they are finally rolling out a calendar

@msn.com
@gmail.com
@rocketmail.com

cox for years.