Self Hosted Mail Server request - and no I haven't gone mad

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Dear all,

Since I was at S of Self-hosting, I’ve taken everyone’s and primarily Tom’s advice to not consider self-hosting mail and I’ve taken it to heart and have been happy.

Yet now I find myself in need of a limited mail solution that is sand-boxed as hell. Reason? AI of course, mainly openclaw/zeroclaw (trying to decide which fits my need best).

Basically I need the agent to go into my mails and do stuff (go through the ton of spam arriving at my work email, pick out the legit ones, research if they’re any good and compile me a list so I have a directory of services I might need in the future OR go through my bills, compile them into my budget, etc, you get the idea). I have no intention of letting it near my actual emails so I thought I could setup a self hosted, contained mail (perhaps the domain restricted to something I only use at home), forward any mail I want the agent to look at into there and allow absolutely no send capability.

I’ve thought about setting up a separate email from some of the spare ones I’m allowed for this but these agents are getting smarter by the minute and I might end up with a situation that I didn’t anticipate. Thus the quest for a contained solution.

The posts on the forums are mostly from 2020-2021 with mostly “don’t host your own server” advice so I’m on the look to see if there’s anything recent and preferably with minimal config/maintenance.

Any suggestions?

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I’ve been using Mailcow for many years and have been quite happy with it. If you haven’t heard of it, Mailcow is a docker project that combines the standard mail server components (postfix, dovecot, etc) along with the Rainloop webmail client.

Also, if you really want to get to know the ins and outs of mail hosting, I’d highly recommend Michael Lucas’s book, Run Your Own Mail Server.

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Thanks! Both for mailcow and Lucas’ book, that man is amazing!

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I am now on my 6th year of running my mail server using the Synology mail plus email server and Thrunderbird as my email clients. I think the hardest thing is that most ISP’s block the ports for consumer internet access and now with Starlink and 5G internet you have to deal with CGNAT so you can’t open ports.

What I am doing now to cover the lack of port forwarding I have setup my own port forwarding using a VPS at DigitalOcean and then Tailscale into the network from there to receive email. I also had to setup a outbound relay at DYNU because the shared nature of CGNAT IP addresses most commercial services like Gmail, Outlook, etc. wont deliver mail from those addresses. I am not giving up on hosting my own even with those hurdles.