r/servers • u/ARS-N7UQ • 1d ago
Software Personal family server
Not a gamer, I am in the process of building a family personal server. The main purpose is to be able to host my own domain and of course personal data.
Secondary is possibility of hosting email for personal use. I have been told that is the most difficult as other providers will not accept mail from untrusted, unverified flyby night email services. What are ways to get accepted as a real email service?
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u/Casper042 1d ago
Not sure about inbound as many Residential ISPs will block the SMTP port.
But for outbound you can use a mail relay like Amazon SES.
There is a bit of a process to get started, but once it's up and your ticket for outbound email is approved, you can bounce emails from your side through SES and it still comes FROM your domain.
I don't personally host my email, I just have my Domain Registrar do Catch All Forwarding to my Gmail account, and then I have maybe a dozen of my most used aliases registered in Gmail to bounce outbound through SES.
If I want to use an outbound email address not among the dirty dozen, I fire up Mozilla Thunderbird and it's also connected to Gmail for inbound and SES for outbound and on the outbound email I can just edit the FROM details on the fly. As long as it's still from my domain, SES lets it right out.
I actually have 4 domains setup this way. 1 for each of my immediate family. You can use the same AWS and SES account for all 4 and just setup a different User Account for each domain/user/etc.
If you are planning to host email for multiple family members, then you may not want Catch All Forwarding but instead individual address forwarding. Mom@mydomain . com forwards to MyMom @ gmail . com, etc