Backup mail service and primary MX

[3246]

I am using Cloudron on a home server and am reluctant to have it either in the cloud or set up a separate one outside of my home just for email.

I was wondering if using an MX service like spamhero.com, which act as the primary mail server, filter messages and then pass them on to your actual mail server a way around the port blocking problem users like me inevitably run into hosting services at home?

Right now, I am using smtp2go.com as my outgoing mail service, which works well for me.

What experiences do you have that you can share?

[3246]

I've done a little test now using the 30-day free trial from spamhero.com (no affiliation) and it's working well! Here's what I have done:

Incoming mail

MX records are now pointing to spamhero.com, which receives mail and passes it along to my Cloudron mail server. For this, I have opened a higher port number and pointed it to the Cloudron's internal port 25.

This means I can receive mail to Cloudron despite the standard SMTP/Mail ports being blocked by my ISP.

Outgoing mail

I have configured Cloudron to use an external SMTP server, which in my case is smtp2go.com (again, not affiliated with them).

As I have full control over domain authentication and can use non-standard ports, I can send fully authenticated mail from Cloudron to external addresses.

Conclusion

You can host private mail on Cloudron even at home, over broadband or conceivably mobile connection, provided you can do basic port forwarding on your router.

I think spamhero.com will come in handy as they do spam filtering and keep a copy of mail for a short while in case your Cloudron is offline. You can even temporarily point all mail to another email address and then redeliver mail once your box is working again (e.g. connection drop, maintenance, etc).

The downside is that Cloudron now complains that it doesn't handle MX directly as I dared point them elsewhere.

Also, if your home IP changes a lot, which is likely on most home broadband connections, then I can recommend Cloudflare (or a similar service) that offers to update your Cloudron's hostname every time the IP changes.

Questions for you

Do you know of other services like spamhero.com and or smtp2go.com? What's your experience with them? How are you using email on your Cloudron?

[girish]

@3246 said in Backup mail service and primary MX:

The downside is that Cloudron now complains that it doesn't handle MX directly as I dared point them elsewhere.

Have you tried setting the MX as part of the SPF record? Like https://docs.cloudron.io/email/#alternate-mx ?

[3246]

@girish thanks, I didn't see that previously (typical!)

I added made sure the record includes "v=spf1 mx..." but it's still showing as erroring in Cloudron.

[d19dotca]

@3246 said in Backup mail service and primary MX:

I added made sure the record includes "v=spf1 mx..." but it's still showing as erroring in Cloudron

Sometimes it takes a while to propagate the change in DNS, so you may need to check it a few hours later.