Hi all, I am in the process of setting up authentik and had the thought of setting up an intranet email for it.
The idea is that I could set up a very simple email server and client that would only work on my home network to manage email notifications, passwords, etc from all my self hosted applications (proxmox, gitea, etc). It wouldn’t need to communicate with the outside world, only users of my intranet.
Have you done something like this? Any particular tools or advice?
I know about other options like the proton SMTP bridge but this seemed more fun!
Why not postfix?
Look at ISPConfig.
It isn’t simple but has all of the services you require:
postfix (SMTP)
dovecot (IMAP)
LMTP
MySQL databases for management
Web-based management interface
If you set up MX records inside your intranet you can go for a really simple setup with postfix. https://www.postfix.org/VIRTUAL_README.html#local After that you should be able to use mutt on the command line via ssh on your postfix virtual server to read the email. If you want webmail though, things will take more time and reading howtos ;-)
I like to use hmailserver just because it’s very easy to set. But being discontinued i keep it inaccessible from outside the network.
Have you looked into self-hosting NextCloud or OwnCloud?
From what I understand nexcloud isn’t a mail server, only a client. I’d need something that can act as an SMTP bridge to actually send emails.
It provides a web interface for mail (and other useful services). You configure it to send outgoing messages through SMTP, qmail, Sendmail, Postfix, Dovecot, take your pick for the back-end.