[LUNI] Mail server question

[Larry Garfield]

On Wednesday, November 24, 2010 9:20:42 am Eric MacAdie wrote:
> I have a few questions for the list.
> 
> Does anyone on the list run their own mail servers?
> 
> If so, which ones? Do you get your mail via POP or IMAP?
> 
> How many people use gmail for their email?

I've run my own mail server for something like 6 years now, maybe a bit more. 
It sits in my living room.  I originally set it up because I wanted unlimited 
IMAP space, and I've since started adding addresses for family as well.  
Google later started offering GMail, but it didn't support filtering (no, tags 
are not filters/folders and to claim such is shear ignorance) and its IMAP 
support was utter crap.  Now they, supposedly, offer halfway decent IMAP 
support.  I haven't tried to do complex filtering server-side with them yet.  
I should probably try that at work to see how well it does.  (We use Google 
Apps for mail at the office.)

Of course, I have no server-side filtering now, either, and every time I've 
tried to learn procmail in the past I've failed utterly due to it being a 
horrid program, the documentation being completely useless, email being a 
moronic architecture, and my own incompetence at comprehending Unix arcanery.  
(I suspect roughly equal parts of each.)

I only have to touch the server when upgrading my OS, which means every time I 
do I have completely forgotten how it all works and it breaks easily.  Email 
is an utterly horrid architecture, IMO.  I just follow online tutorials for 
the appropriate Ubuntu server version.  That usually leaves me with postfix 
(with MySQL backend), courier-imap, postgrey, and clam-av.  I also have a 
business-grade line with Comcast, which aside from offering really nice speed 
means they don't block any ports.  Forwarding SMTP through Comcasts mail 
servers (a fully supported and legal option; there's even a wizard setting for 
it in Debian/Ubuntu) means I don't think I've ever been blacklisted.

I would only recommend it if you really want to learn how to do it, you're 
masochistic, or you're as paranoid of mega-corps owning all of the world's 
data as I am.  Even at that, I keep pondering moving to a hosted solution, 
usually every time I'm looking at spending all weekend on a server upgrade, 
95% of it on the mail server.  I'm actually about due for another round of 
such pain, so this is a very timely thread. :-)

Does anyone know a good hosted-IMAP solution that's *not* Google, Microsoft, 
or Facebook (the current Axis of Evil as far as "owning the world" goes) that 
is at least vaguely reasonably priced?  Anyone know if Google's IMAP filtering 
no longer sucks?

--Larry Garfield