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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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How can I host an IMAP connected to thirdparty POP? (programming.dev)

submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Basically, I'd like to have my own domain e.g [email protected] but not go through the hassle of hosting my own email service: I'd like to use another service that handled SPF, DMARC, and whatever else for me, grab the emails from their service using POP, and make it available to my email client on android and Linux using IMAP. SMTP will be through the third party.

This way, if the third party starts doing some bullshit like trying to lock me in, donating to a dickhead, or whatever else I disagree with, I can cancel my subscription, move to another third party, and keep all mails on my server.

How can I achieve this? Which search terms should I be using? "Self host email server" brings up stuff that's the equivalent of self-hosting gmail, AOL, posteo, kollabnow, or whatever, but that's not what I want. "Selfhost POP relay" doesn't have much better results, always bringing up SMTP relay...

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Does your POP mail client sync across android and Linux (3 devices BTW)? Do share it!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm confused about the POP requirement if you're not already using a specific service. Every mail server has IMAP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

This way, if the third party starts doing some bullshit like trying to lock me in, donating to a dickhead, or whatever else I disagree with, I can cancel my subscription, move to another third party, and keep all mails on my server.

I would like to be able to change providers and have the emails available on multiple devices.

IMAP allows multiple devices but leaves the emails on the server. POP pulls them from the server but that means they aren't available to other devices anymore.

The solution (I think) is to pull using POP onto a shared server, then make the pulled emails available using IMAP.

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

It wouldn't work the way you're imagining, at least not by default. You're thinking of using IMAP as an archive of sorts, but that's not how it organized data. The exchanged mails between the IMAP host and the MTA need a unique identifier to organize contents of the DB, and this would not be possible or automatic if your switched the upstream MTA.

Maybe you could run an interchange of sorts that pulls mail and acts as another interim MTA and pushes them to something to achieve what you're going for. I'd be shocked if you found anything that documents a solution like this because it's 100x easier to just organize multiple accounts and have local organized archives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

The exchanged mails between the IMAP host and the MTA need a unique identifier to organize contents of the DB, and this would not be possible or automatic if your switched the upstream MTA.

It sure is possible. I've copied maildirs over different software, different servers, local copies back to the server and so on. Also if you just rely on your own IMAP server the upstream doesn't matter as fetchmail (or whatever you choose to use) anyways communicates between hosts on their preferred protocols.

Obviously there's a tradeoff since now you're responsible for your backups and maintaining your server, but it can sit nicely on your private LAN with access only locally or via VPN without direct access to the internet. And you don't need MTA to run IMAP server in the first place.