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  3. /r/selfhosted are not big Cloudron fans

/r/selfhosted are not big Cloudron fans

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    • perelinP Online
      perelinP Online
      perelin
      wrote last edited by perelin
      #1

      Not sure why, but the /r/selfhosted crowd is not big on Cloudron it seems. Got multiple downvotes and critical reply. 🤷

      https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1kcyqpg/what_optionsideas_for_personal_server/

      66f69912-e0b0-4934-8762-13fabd486593-image.png

      1 Reply Last reply
      3
      • robiR Offline
        robiR Offline
        robi
        wrote last edited by
        #2

        They don't understand. They never will, unless they experience it without prejudice..

        It cannot even be a discussion. Best to keep things mysterious and secretive.

        Conscious tech

        1 Reply Last reply
        5
        • BrutalBirdieB Offline
          BrutalBirdieB Offline
          BrutalBirdie
          Partner
          wrote last edited by
          #3

          People on reddit can be . . . well. . . special at least.

          Just leaving this here:
          https://www.science.org/content/article/unethical-ai-research-reddit-under-fire

          Like my work? Consider donating a drink. Cheers!

          1 Reply Last reply
          4
          • SansGuidonS Offline
            SansGuidonS Offline
            SansGuidon
            wrote last edited by SansGuidon
            #4

            For me, I got into Cloudron thanks to

            , both in French. Anyway I contributed the reddit thread. It is normal to not please everyone in forums, but yet it is important to take those opportunities to share some good words to the public about Cloudron.

            About me / Now

            1 Reply Last reply
            4
            • scookeS Offline
              scookeS Offline
              scooke
              wrote last edited by
              #5

              it seems a good number of those members are actually homelabbers anyway. I, for one, don't lump self-hosting with homelabs. The issues are too different between the two.

              A life lived in fear is a life half-lived

              1 Reply Last reply
              6
              • SansGuidonS Offline
                SansGuidonS Offline
                SansGuidon
                wrote last edited by
                #6

                Yeah, I gave up on homelabs long ago too.

                About me / Now

                1 Reply Last reply
                2
                • J Online
                  J Online
                  joseph
                  Staff
                  wrote last edited by joseph
                  #7

                  I am active there . r/selfhosted is self hosting enthusiasts and tinkerers. There was a survey a while ago about the users and a veyr big chunk was mostly people trying to learn devops/k8s and it doesn't matter if thigns break and you have to start over. Given the personal and education use space, it has a bias for "free" as in beer stuff. Nothing wrong with all this, just giving some context around that sub . It's a great sub for discovering new projects and getting some tips here and there (off late, the technical users have dried up a lot though) . Depending on the mood of the day, you might even get downvoted if suggesting using a VPS btw 🙂 It's because they are much in the homelab and hosting with laptops on a private lan .

                  An anomaly in all this is that they are vehemently against selfhosting email (you can search for various threads) 🙂

                  1 Reply Last reply
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                  • SansGuidonS Offline
                    SansGuidonS Offline
                    SansGuidon
                    wrote last edited by
                    #8

                    While I'm in favor of self hosting a lot of apps, I am also panicked by the idea of self hosting email which I consider more secure in the hands of FastMail than on my VPS 😆

                    About me / Now

                    jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
                    1
                    • SansGuidonS SansGuidon

                      While I'm in favor of self hosting a lot of apps, I am also panicked by the idea of self hosting email which I consider more secure in the hands of FastMail than on my VPS 😆

                      jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                      jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                      jdaviescoates
                      wrote last edited by jdaviescoates
                      #9

                      @SansGuidon each to their own, I guess. 🙂

                      I've been self hosting all my email since starting to use Cloudron about 5 or 6 years ago and it most works great 🙂

                      I'm not sure, but I think most of us here are self hosting our email 🙂

                      (and the fact that we can use Cloudron for that is one of its USPs - none of the other alternatives offer a full email server etc out of the box).

                      I'm personally not too bothered about email security given

                      1. unencrpyped emails are like postcards - anyone can read them in transit, and
                      2. nearly all emails are read by Big Tech anyway (just because even if you're self-hosting most people you're emailing won't be - they'll be using Google or M$).

                      Email and security don't really go together. If you need to communicate something securely, don't use email.

                      I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                      1 Reply Last reply
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                      • SansGuidonS Offline
                        SansGuidonS Offline
                        SansGuidon
                        wrote last edited by
                        #10

                        I really want to self host email ideally but I've read many times in privacy/self-hosting communities it is not so easy nor recommended to want to do that yourself, and I feel it is complicated to do well -> scam/spam management, server reputation, and good automation/UX etc. I want ideally to take too much on my plate. I feel like it is a job in itself to administrate an email server and all the tooling around it, if you want to provide an experience that is as nice as Gmail/FastMail & the likes. But I hope to be wrong. What I liked with Gmail/Fastmail and the likes is the ease of administrating the various options via the web interface, without being too tech savy. I'm not ready to give up on this user web experience also I wouldn't know where to start to make my email server as secure and safe as the popular privacy focused solutions.

                        What do you use for yourself?

                        About me / Now

                        jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
                        0
                        • SansGuidonS SansGuidon

                          I really want to self host email ideally but I've read many times in privacy/self-hosting communities it is not so easy nor recommended to want to do that yourself, and I feel it is complicated to do well -> scam/spam management, server reputation, and good automation/UX etc. I want ideally to take too much on my plate. I feel like it is a job in itself to administrate an email server and all the tooling around it, if you want to provide an experience that is as nice as Gmail/FastMail & the likes. But I hope to be wrong. What I liked with Gmail/Fastmail and the likes is the ease of administrating the various options via the web interface, without being too tech savy. I'm not ready to give up on this user web experience also I wouldn't know where to start to make my email server as secure and safe as the popular privacy focused solutions.

                          What do you use for yourself?

                          jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                          jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                          jdaviescoates
                          wrote last edited by jdaviescoates
                          #11

                          @SansGuidon said in /r/selfhosted are not big Cloudron fans:

                          What do you use for yourself?

                          Cloudron. No email server administration required. It's all just baked in.

                          I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                          1 Reply Last reply
                          3
                          • SansGuidonS Offline
                            SansGuidonS Offline
                            SansGuidon
                            wrote last edited by
                            #12

                            Yeah I dunno, when checking the docs (https://docs.cloudron.io/email/) about the email server for Cloudron, I find already some dead links like https://docs.cloudron.io/api/ , the web mails I see listed seem outdated in term of UX and look more like toys than like serious alternatives to webmails clients I'm used to.
                            Now I do not say it is bad, I'm however interested in shared experiences of how to migrate to this. With Fastmail it was really easy (a few seconds) to migrate from Gmail and sync everything contacts/calendars/emails and rules, signatures, etc. However for Cloudron, is there any docs related to this?

                            About me / Now

                            jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
                            1
                            • nebulonN Away
                              nebulonN Away
                              nebulon
                              Staff
                              wrote last edited by
                              #13

                              Thanks for the api docs link hint. This is fixed now.

                              1 Reply Last reply
                              4
                              • SansGuidonS Offline
                                SansGuidonS Offline
                                SansGuidon
                                wrote last edited by SansGuidon
                                #14

                                thanks @nebulon! while you edit those parts, some other dead external links found on same page:
                                http://www.lashback.com/blacklist
                                http://dnsbl.sorbs.net

                                and a dead internal link:
                                https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/community/smtp-relay-configuration.md

                                About me / Now

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • SansGuidonS SansGuidon

                                  Yeah I dunno, when checking the docs (https://docs.cloudron.io/email/) about the email server for Cloudron, I find already some dead links like https://docs.cloudron.io/api/ , the web mails I see listed seem outdated in term of UX and look more like toys than like serious alternatives to webmails clients I'm used to.
                                  Now I do not say it is bad, I'm however interested in shared experiences of how to migrate to this. With Fastmail it was really easy (a few seconds) to migrate from Gmail and sync everything contacts/calendars/emails and rules, signatures, etc. However for Cloudron, is there any docs related to this?

                                  jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                                  jdaviescoatesJ Offline
                                  jdaviescoates
                                  wrote last edited by jdaviescoates
                                  #15

                                  @SansGuidon said in /r/selfhosted are not big Cloudron fans:

                                  the web mails I see listed seem outdated in term of UX and look more like toys than like serious alternatives to webmails clients I'm used to.

                                  Yeah, this is the biggest issue IMHO. None of the open source webmail clients are really up to scratch. But they are all usable. I mostly use SnappyMail but it does have some glitches and every now and then I go over to Roundcube for some reason or another. Nextcloud Mail isn't bad either. And we also have SoGo mail. It's easy to use any of them. Or just use a Desktop app like Thunderbird.

                                  I use Cloudron with Gandi & Hetzner

                                  1 Reply Last reply
                                  1
                                  • robiR Offline
                                    robiR Offline
                                    robi
                                    wrote last edited by
                                    #16

                                    It is a bit surprising that noone decided to duplicate the earlier generattion UX of GMail or YMail and make it a web/desktop app for POP/IMAP. The constant upgrade drift into brutalist or minimalist UI is tiresome.

                                    Y! has severely gone downhill, and many Virgo types want to organize where every email belongs and aren't fond of labels from G!

                                    What's one to do once those options are no longer options?

                                    Conscious tech

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • luckowL Offline
                                      luckowL Offline
                                      luckow
                                      translator
                                      wrote last edited by luckow
                                      #17

                                      My 2 cents on the discussion about self-hosted email servers: In the early days, everyone had their own mail server because we could and it was the only way to communicate with the world via email. With the advent of capitalism and wider use of the internet, some companies have moved into this “niche”.

                                      I borrow a saying from sport and apply it to open source:
                                      “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich.” -> “Created by open source, stolen by closed source”

                                      Don't be afraid of self-hosting email. We need to take steps to get freedom back.

                                      Pronouns: he/him | Primary language: German

                                      robiR 1 Reply Last reply
                                      4
                                      • luckowL Offline
                                        luckowL Offline
                                        luckow
                                        translator
                                        wrote last edited by
                                        #18

                                        To give some context: If you run your own mail server, you have the ability to view and analyse log files.

                                        As far as I know, with a SaaS mail server you can't see delivery or bounce messages from sources.

                                        You have no idea if a sender mail server is on a whitelist, even though the server is on a spam list - only because of “backroom conversations” between an inner circle.

                                        I was told by a customer that he had no chance to deliver mails to a large service provider because his sender IP was on a spam filter list. It took almost 10 days to get the IP off the list.

                                        2 weeks later, the customer told us: we are not receiving any mails from the service provider. Because we use the same spam filter lists, the mails were rejected because the service provider's mail server was on the spam filter list.

                                        Because the service provider didn't care, we had to lower our shield to receive emails from them.

                                        It's unfair just because of the flies and shit.
                                        Some are equal some are more equal.

                                        Pronouns: he/him | Primary language: German

                                        1 Reply Last reply
                                        4
                                        • luckowL luckow

                                          My 2 cents on the discussion about self-hosted email servers: In the early days, everyone had their own mail server because we could and it was the only way to communicate with the world via email. With the advent of capitalism and wider use of the internet, some companies have moved into this “niche”.

                                          I borrow a saying from sport and apply it to open source:
                                          “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich.” -> “Created by open source, stolen by closed source”

                                          Don't be afraid of self-hosting email. We need to take steps to get freedom back.

                                          robiR Offline
                                          robiR Offline
                                          robi
                                          wrote last edited by
                                          #19

                                          @luckow said in /r/selfhosted are not big Cloudron fans:

                                          Don't be afraid of self-hosting email. We need to take steps to get freedom back.

                                          To that notion, IRC did not used to be fashionable in Corp land until someone reinvented it with Slack.

                                          Don't be afraid of creating something new that eclipses IRC, Email and all else, like Signal.org and ConfidantMail.org did. Now with the benefit of code assisting LLMs.

                                          It's May of 2025, Microsoft is shutting down Skype and we don't have a default way of sending files (or making calls) to each other from our devices that is effortless. We have to rely on 3rd party Apps that get so complex your Mom can't use it and it's easier to just think of FTP or Email.

                                          It's time to bring back delight to computing and the internet, not control and restrictions.

                                          Isn't that why we're on Cloudron.io ?

                                          Conscious tech

                                          1 Reply Last reply
                                          2
                                          • SansGuidonS Offline
                                            SansGuidonS Offline
                                            SansGuidon
                                            wrote last edited by
                                            #20

                                            For me, there's a big difference between self-hosting non-critical apps and self-hosting email — which is a core pillar of my online identity. Email impacts security, reputation, privacy, and productivity.

                                            If I choose to self-host it, I want full control without spending hours checking logs to make sure I'm not being hacked or silently blacklisted. I don’t want to build half a dozen tools just to compensate for the lack of UX or decent API. I also don’t want to waste time writing migration scripts and gluing things together.

                                            Spinning up an email server and connecting a webmail client is one thing. Keeping it secure, private, and user-friendly long-term — that’s the real challenge for me.

                                            About me / Now

                                            jdaviescoatesJ 1 Reply Last reply
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