An email host for a control-freaky but lazy nerd?
June 11, 2010 8:46 AM Subscribe
Where should this power user/control freak have his email live?
A smarter man - or at least one with less picky requirements - would just go to Google Apps for Domains. I am not that man.
I have to think there's other folks as nerdy and picky as me who want a lot of control and features but don't want to deal with administering a virtual box, but I'm really leaning towards moving my mail from where it's hosted on a Joyent shared hosting account and onto a Linode slice.(1)
Is there a better way? I want IMAP. I want semi-sophisticated server-side tagging & foldering so reading from my mobile device is just as organized. I want spam filtering that doesn't make borderline suspicious mail disappear into the cornfield w/o any notice or ability to fine-tune.
I like - but can live w/o - my current ability to have my filter fire of a prowl notification when certain high-priority people/issues show up in my mailbox.
Do any of you have this same personality disorder and have you found a home for your mail that satisfies your twitchyness without turning you into a part-time sysadmin just for the sake of an email?
(1) The issue with being on Joyent is this - like all shared hosting they have to exercise certain controls on how much in the way of resources you suck up. The way they do it makes for periodic annoyance as IMAP processes lag or stall because of memory constraints or disk IO limits or who the hell knows what. While a virtual host would have limits as well they'd be implemented across the whole virtualized system and I don't think I'd see these same annoyances.
A smarter man - or at least one with less picky requirements - would just go to Google Apps for Domains. I am not that man.
I have to think there's other folks as nerdy and picky as me who want a lot of control and features but don't want to deal with administering a virtual box, but I'm really leaning towards moving my mail from where it's hosted on a Joyent shared hosting account and onto a Linode slice.(1)
Is there a better way? I want IMAP. I want semi-sophisticated server-side tagging & foldering so reading from my mobile device is just as organized. I want spam filtering that doesn't make borderline suspicious mail disappear into the cornfield w/o any notice or ability to fine-tune.
I like - but can live w/o - my current ability to have my filter fire of a prowl notification when certain high-priority people/issues show up in my mailbox.
Do any of you have this same personality disorder and have you found a home for your mail that satisfies your twitchyness without turning you into a part-time sysadmin just for the sake of an email?
(1) The issue with being on Joyent is this - like all shared hosting they have to exercise certain controls on how much in the way of resources you suck up. The way they do it makes for periodic annoyance as IMAP processes lag or stall because of memory constraints or disk IO limits or who the hell knows what. While a virtual host would have limits as well they'd be implemented across the whole virtualized system and I don't think I'd see these same annoyances.
Short answer - no. Sounds like qmail/postfix + dovecot + greylisting + spamassassin/dspam. I have a similar setup on my VPS with futurehosting.com (reliable people, would recommend, no vested interest). But I gave up using/maintaining the email setup because it was just too time-consuming. If you're anything like me, you won't be able to stop tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking.
posted by nihraguk at 11:16 AM on June 11, 2010
posted by nihraguk at 11:16 AM on June 11, 2010
Same needs/desires as you, and I've gone the linode route. FWIW, once I got things set up (which took, oh, let's say... a few hours, over a weekend), it's been pretty much maintenance free -- go in occasionally and run 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade', but other than that, not a lot of effort involved.
posted by genehack at 5:39 PM on June 11, 2010
posted by genehack at 5:39 PM on June 11, 2010
+1 for linode, I have one and love it so much more than any other host plan I've used. I'll never back to hosting without having root on the box.
posted by DJWeezy at 10:02 PM on June 11, 2010
posted by DJWeezy at 10:02 PM on June 11, 2010
Go with a VPS. I use Linode. You'll be as control freaky as you want.
posted by Brian Puccio at 8:05 AM on June 12, 2010
posted by Brian Puccio at 8:05 AM on June 12, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by phearlez at 9:34 AM on June 11, 2010