Options for self-hosted email filtering software?

February 12, 2015 1:24 PM

I'm looking for something like Sanebox that I can host myself on a relatively low-powered VPS. I tried Simplify Email, but found it was a bit of a pain, and I ended loosing some mail. I also tried my email provider's filters in Roundcube, but they seemed to stop working over time. I'm currently relying on a copy of Postbox running on my home computer all the time.

Functionality I require:
- automatic deleting and filing of incoming mail
- autoresponse
- automatic forwarding to other services (e.g. Evernote)

Functionality I would like, but is a bonus:
- training based on how I file emails
- quiet hours
- daily digest of actions taken

posted by sincarne to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Depending on the MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) and operating system you run you can get something like spamassassin as the delivery agent, and let it set header options for how spammy it thinks links are. From there your mail tools can sort the messages.

(For me I use postfix+spamassassin on debian on a small linode, and have fed it spam and ham to determine my loves and hates)
posted by nickggully at 3:32 PM on February 12, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks! The thing is, I don't really want to run the server on my VPS. I'm happy to have Hover keep managing my email. What I want is something that can dip into any of my mail accounts and work its magic there.

Regarding the postfix and spam assassin combo, my googling fails me: how would one use that to do things other than just kill spam?
posted by sincarne at 7:29 PM on February 12, 2015

Response by poster: If anyone finds this thread looking for a similar solution, I've got part of the way there with imapfilter. I can filter, and am figuring out it's ability to pipe parts of a message out to other applications or scripts to do autoresponses. I suspect I may even be able to do quiet hours with an unsubscribed folder to which things are moved during a given time. The configuration is basically a Lua script, so it's got a lot of flexibility.

Here's the github page for imapfilter, and this is a pretty good tutorial. This post on using mutt for mail management gives me something to work toward as well! Finally, more on learning Lua over at the Lua User's wiki.
posted by sincarne at 12:16 PM on March 11, 2015