# Hosting my own mailserver for Discourse?

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [12월 30, 2018, 3:25오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316 "2018-12-30T15:25:05Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Benjamin\_Johnston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@Benjamin\_Johnston](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Benjamin_Johnston)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 3:25오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/1 "2018-12-30T15:25:05Z")

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I have looked around but all the tutorials say to use a service like Mailgun, but I would rather not.

Anyone know how I would host my own mailserver to use with Discourse.

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### Author: ![fhe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/fhe/32/113345_2.png) [@fhe](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fhe)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 3:38오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/2 "2018-12-30T15:38:44Z")

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This site has a good tutorial on setting up your own ISP-level mail server:

[https://workaround.org/ispmail](https://workaround.org/ispmail)

All I’d say is that it’s not trivial, but the tutorial and the introduction should give you an idea on what’s necessary.

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### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 6:18오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/3 "2018-12-30T18:18:15Z")

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I ran mail servers for close to two decades. When I started, I started by porting Sendmail, UUCP, and listproc to Linux. For almost two years I’ve been considering running my own mail server again; I even have access to a Discourse forum that generates lots of mail (that I’m paying Mailgun to deliver) that I could use to warm up an IP, and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if some of that mail got classified as spam while things were getting started. I have a server that’s on an IP block that is not likely to be on lots of blacklist.

Those a near-perfect conditions for setting up a mail server. I haven’t done it.

If you’re sending fewer than 10K messages per month and have access to a credit card there is almost no reason to run your own mail server.

Another “easy” way to do it appears to be Mail in a Box. You can get help on getting it working from [https://discourse.mailinabox.email/](https://discourse.mailinabox.email/)

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### Author: ![Benjamin\_Johnston](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@Benjamin\_Johnston](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Benjamin_Johnston)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 6:23오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/4 "2018-12-30T18:23:14Z")

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I’ve looked into mailinabox but it only supports Ubuntu 14.04

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### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 7:33오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/5 "2018-12-30T19:33:25Z")

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Indeed, that doesn’t bode well for the project. Perhaps running a mail server isn’t as easy as they thought. 🙂

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### Author: ![justin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/justin/32/157614_2.png) [@justin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/justin)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 7:41오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/6 "2018-12-30T19:41:20Z")

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As a former IT guy, I echo @pfaffman’s advice. There’s a lot of unnecessary and troublesome work ahead if you choose to roll your own mail server.

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### Author: ![itsbhanusharma](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/itsbhanusharma/32/180717_2.png) [@itsbhanusharma](https://meta.discourse.org/u/itsbhanusharma)
#### Post date: [12월 30, 2018, 7:42오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/hosting-my-own-mailserver-for-discourse/105316/7 "2018-12-30T19:42:01Z")

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Mass emailing is not recommended through mailinabox and mailcow (and even docker-mailserver)

The reason is that all of them are built as a communication suite not as a mass mail sender.

While the easiest will be to set up an MTA and just use it to send emails I haven’t had much success in getting things like EXIM to work nicely with discourse.
