Hey guys, I’m currently studying computer science and have used Google domains for a while to host my own website. In lieu of domains being discontinued by Google I’m thinking about moving every service I’ve used there to a Debian VM, which would be hosted by a company in my country, but I would have root access.
This would include a Web- and a Mailserver pretty much. I’m not a beginner when it comes to handling a CLI, but I am quite rusty and would prefer a solution that I set up once and don’t have to maintain weekly to keep it going.
I’m aware selfhosting entails some kind of maintenance, I pretty much just don’t want to be overwhelmed and suddenly lose access to my mails by being lazy.
Serverwise I’ve setup Apache and Postfix already in my studies, but I’m not sure if those are the best solutions.
I’d really love a few pointers and do’s and don’ts if you’d be so kind to help me out 😄
Thanks!
(I’ve posted this to a different community already, but this one seems more active, sorry if you see this double!)
Edit: Thanks for all the input! I’ll use Ionos to register my domain and their free Mailservice they provide with it. My website is currently still hosted with firebase, but I’ll move it to a Linux VM also hosted by Ionos…
Self hosting mail server is one of the worst ideas. You need to have top notch security, always updating patches and on top of that somehow manage to get your mail not to go into spam folder. Google and Microsoft don’t usually like self hosted emails.
If you still are going to go through with this, good luck! I’m going to check regularly how your path goes. Sadly I can’t help you at all, just some wide words repeated by others.
I admin a debian mail server in my job and hands down it is the biggest pain in the rear. The more I learn about it, the more I realize we have huge unsolvable gaps in documentation, maintenance ability, and monitoring.
I’m an avid self hoster. I will self host anything I can, except email. It’s a bad idea all around. From security, complex administration, to not having a two factor password emailed out to you because of an issue on your network. And more reasons. Digital ocean has a decent article on it as well as many others. There are plenty of good providers out there to use. Personally I use Protonmail.
If you do only web and mail you could consider a web space instead of a VPS. For example Netcup.eu offers packets which include email, Ionos offers one mail account per user account too I think.
Also as you said self hosting emails is quite some pain because Gmail, Microsoft etc blacklist small mail servers rather quickly. Depending on your motivation you could also use Protonmail or mailbox.org as mail provider with your own domain.
Anyway, Debian is a solid choice due to long support times.
