Source
r/sysadmin•
gm85

Self-Hosted, On-Premise Email Solutions for 2021

Hey Everyone,

After reading the post about Microsoft making some changes to Office 365 here: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/l5clpy/psa_starting_february_22nd_2021_anyone_with_an/

It brought up an interesting question: Other than Exchange, what solutions/products are out there for Self-Hosted / On-Premise email nowadays?

Are people staying with Exchange? are they moving to another Commercial email solution, or are they looking at Linux / Open Source.

I know this topic can bring up a lot of discussion for the Cloud/Self-Hosted Email opinions. However, I think that should be left for a separate discussion since many organizations still prefer Self-Hosted / On-Premise email no matter the pricing or usability cloud email can have.

Posted Jan 26, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

017
DanielB1990•

I'm using Mailcow, works great. Also see https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/l38hd9/advice_on_selfhosting_an_email_server/gkc4dho?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

3
gm85OP•

Thanks for the link. Some pretty good resources in there. Yeah obviously the biggest factor when hosting your own email is verification and preventing malicious use.

We have subscribe to a third-party service to filter virus/spam filtering messages before they arrive at our server and have an outgoing MTA for DKIM signing.

Of course SPF records are a must nowadays too.

1
DanielB1990•

Mailcow does that, has an incoming filter and gives dkim records to add to the DNS of the domain(s) you're adding for signing: https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-dockerized-docs/prerequisite-dns/#the-advanced-dns-configuration

I've been able to get everything working just a it should be running for a mail server.

The only thing mailcow is missing is SRS ( Sender rewriting scheme ) for rewriting the 'return-path' for forwarding.

There's a demo @ https://mailcow.email

1
itsupport_engineer•

For me the solution is Zimbra on Linux. Very good solution open source and low cost commecial solution.

2
gm85OP•

Zimbra seems like a fairly decent product. I like how it looks like an all-in-one solution and also can offer an outlook connector, which can help with existing deployments.

1
SuperQueBit Plumber•

Happ with G Suite for quite a while.

All aboard the downvote train!

2
gm85OP•

Hey if G Suite works for you, it's all good!

1
SuperQueBit Plumber•

Yea, for work, I don't want to actually deal with mail.

I still have a hobby domain with postfix/dovecot. But, holy shit, it's more trouble than it's worth.

1
CaptainFluffyTailIt's bastards all the way down•

Email is the easy part. For an organization it often comes down to calendaring as a make or break point for a provider. There is a lot of Microsoft Outlook installed on the desktop and if the Outlook Calendar does not play nice then your email project is a failure. I have been involved in too many mail projects over the years that did explicitly state calendar/meeting functionality but that was the metric that determined if it was a success or not.

If your organization can embrace web-based email and calendaring it is easier to avoid the MS Outlook landmine. That still involves getting a lot of people comfortable with web-only (and likely a mobile app even if it is the built-in phone one) and that can be a stretch if you already have Outlook in the organization.

2
gm85OP•

Yeah it needs to be taken into consideration how it will impact the employees and how do the features carryover / change.

In my case I'd definitely do a couple trial runs beforehand to make sure everything is compatible.

We use outlook, however everyone at work is pretty open to migrating to a new system as long as it meets their needs.

1
Der_tolle_EmilSr. Sysadmin•

I don't have any experience running anything besides Exchange myself, but I have dealt with users who had their mailboxes hosted by someone running https://www.open-xchange.com/ and while it did require an Outlook plugin back then to get it to work it at least worked rather well. Never had any issues; As mentioned though, no idea how nice it is to maintain.

Well, not having any experience besides Exchange isn't really true come to think of it, I managed several Postfix/Dovecot/Cyrus/Courier setups but they were all just a handful of users, and even that was already painful enough to manage to never make me consider running them on a larger scale; Especially because they simply pale in terms of functionality compared to Exchange, at least if you want everything in one package. They are definitely very reliable but I didn't find them as flexible as I would like them to be. However, I am sure that the small amount of users played a huge role because I never had the correct backend infrastructure that would give me the flexibility I was looking for.

1
gm85OP•

That really brings up a good point how there are various solutions depending on how much you want to support/maintain it.

On one end you have the all-in-one package, where it's a single piece of supplied software. Support is easy, but the options are fixed based on what the product offers.

Whereas on the other-end, you can choose individual components which gives you complete flexibility, but the maintenance, support and integration of all the components will be much, much greater (and typically means you're on your own)

1
garage72•

FortiNet has FortiMail product. Works well IMO. Physical or VM. HA is offered also.

1
squigit99VMware Admin•

I ran a Communigate environment for years. Worked well, cost $$$

1
JeepMunkee•

It is quite amazing no one has offered a cheaper and better alternative to Exchange in the on prem space. Lotus Notes might have been the last one.

1
AloofStealth•

Postfix/dovecot if you are into Linux. Relatively boring and stable.

1
[deleted]•

Stop wasting your life on Microsoft Exchange crap, and try something like Directadmin or Cpanel (exim/dovecot), and look at how to setup a proper CalDAV service. From there you have emails and calendar, with no coercive bs from Microsoft. Bonus, use Thunderbird as a mail client, and you win a medal :)

Once you've figured that out, there are no reason to go back ever.

-1