Postfix

Comes with postfix installed (no configuration selected). It is in fact already possible to send emails with just this setup alone.

However, for a fully functioning email server, you will need:

1. Improve email deliverability by setting up proper DNS records. DNS setup for email is non-trivial. You need to take care of things like SPF, DMARC, MX, DKIM records.
2. Install and configure dovecot.
3. Add users to mysql database.
4. Obtain a SSL certificate.

Good news: these things are automated over at selfhostedemailserver.com, which makes self hosting your own email server as easy as clicking a few buttons by automating all the tasks you’d have to hire a IT administrator for.

Plus it’s dirt-cheap price of $0.50/user/month.

SelfHostedEmailServer.com was designed for users with zero technical expertise to be able to host their own email server in 15 minutes.

You can also guarantee email deliverability by easily configuring a outbound SMTP relay. (Deliverability is the single biggest problem in self-hosting email! Entire IP blocks of DigitalOcean have been blacklisted by Microsoft Outlook).

For suggestions on how we can automated to make self hosting email servers even easier, please contact the chat support at the website, or email [email protected]

Creating an App using the Control Panel

Click the Deploy to DigitalOcean button to create a Droplet based on this 1-Click App. If you aren’t logged in, this link will prompt you to log in with your DigitalOcean account.

Creating an App using the API

In addition to creating a Droplet from the Postfix 1-Click App using the control panel, you can also use the DigitalOcean API. As an example, to create a 4GB Postfix Droplet in the SFO2 region, you can use the following curl command. You need to either save your API access token) to an environment variable or substitute it in the command below.

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
         -H 'Authorization: Bearer '$TOKEN'' -d \
        '{"name":"choose_a_name","region":"sfo2","size":"s-2vcpu-4gb","image": "autopanel-postfix"}' \
        "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/droplets"

Getting Started After Deploying Postfix

ssh root@your_droplet_public_ipv4

cd /etc/postfix

cp main.cf.proto main.cf

vim main.cf

Then configure main.cf

Then test sending emails.

All of this requires some non-trivial technical expertise.

Good news: we’ve automated this over at selfhostedemailserver.com, which makes self hosting your own email server as easy as clicking a few buttons by automating all the tasks you’d have to hire a IT administrator for.

SelfHostedEmailServer.com was designed for users with zero technical expertise to be able to host their own email server in 15 minutes.

You can also guarantee email deliverability by easily configuring a outbound SMTP relay. (Deliverability is the single biggest problem in self-hosting email! Entire IP blocks of DigitalOcean have been blacklisted by Microsoft Outlook).

We are open to suggestions on whatever we can automate to make self hosting email servers even easier. You can talk to the chat support or email us.