Homebrew email

This tutorial operates on the assumption that you’re using a free webmail account or want to sync work email with your mail client. While this does cover the usual scenario for most people, you might be interested in hosting your own mail server.

There are a number of reasons why you may want to do this. Perhaps you’ve become concerned about your webmail provider’s security and privacy practices, or maybe you want to set up email accounts for everyone in your household.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then one of the most straightforward ways of hosting your own email is installing iRedMail. This is a full- featured, open source mail server that will manage email, calendars, contacts and spam automatically using its in-built components. In addition, the suite follows current industry best practice when it comes to encryption.

You can also enjoy webmail-style functionality thanks to the inclusion of a component called Roundcube ( www.roundcube.net), which gives you a decent amount of mail client functionality through your web browser.

There’s still some work that you’ll have to do to ensure your mail doesn’t end up in other peoples’ spam folders. This can include choosing your host carefully and adding DKIM/SPF information for the domain you’re hosting your server on to validate the origin address of the emails you send. Fortunately, the documentation on the project website is comprehensive and easy to follow.

Bear in mind, however, that hosting your own email has very serious security implications. If someone breaks into your server then they can potentially read all the email you’re hosting or misuse your setup-to-spam lists of harvested email addresses. If you want to go beyond tinkering then we strongly suggest that you only consider using it as your primary email solution after you’ve adequately locked down your server, and put intrusion detection and monitoring systems into place.