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E-mail

Self-hosted e-mail service

E-mail is a time-tested protocol that needs no introduction. A personal mail server will provide special privacy for all correspondence and is useful for registering in online services and personal correspondence, especially for Delta.Chat.

Important! Provider may be blocking email sending.

About SSO integration

  • E-mail passwords management, with a quick setup button for Delta Chat availeble at https://api.YOUR.DOMAIN. There will be a self-service portal for your users
  • To log in, use your full email address (including the domain) as your username

For details, what is SSO and how to use it?

Connection configuration

Login must the username with the domain. For example, user@domain.tld.

The email account password must be set separately on the following page: https://api.YOUR.DOMAIN.

Incoming server: IMAP

Protocol: IMAP

Hostname / IMAP Server: your.domain

Port / IMAP Port: 993

Connection security: SSL/TLS

Authentication method: Normal password

Username: your_username@your.domain (your full email address)

Outgoing server: SMTP

Hostname / SMTP Server: your.domain

Port / SMTP Port: 465

Connection security: SSL/TLS

Authentication method: Normal password

Username: your_username@your.domain (your full email address)

Configuration example for Mozilla Thunderbird. Don’t forget to click the “re-test” button after you have entered the correct configuration.

What do we use as our email server?

On the deployed server, the following components are responsible for sending, receiving, filtering emails:

  • Postfix — SMTP server;
  • Dovecot 2 — IMAP server;
  • Rspamd — SPAM filter;

Tips

Alias for addresses

Use aliases for questionable services or one-time needs.

Messages for user+alias@domain.com will go to user@domain.com. It can be useful for spam origin analysis if a unique alias is used for each online service when registering. For example, bank+user@domain.com, cryptoexchenge+user@domain.com, and so on.

Directory Filter

Create directories of filters for different purposes. This will help protect against phishing and clogging your inbox. The message for user-dir@domain.com will create a dir directory in the user@domain.com mailbox and all mail will arrive in the dir directory.

Examples:

  • user-w@domain.com - for registering with web services
  • user-shops - for web-stores
  • user-pay - payment systems
  • user-forum - forum notifications

Sending email does not work

Sending email may be blocked by your provider.

Hetzner responds that they do indeed block the email for new accounts. After one month of server operation and the first successful payment, Hetzner asks to contact support to clarify the reasons for using email. You may mention that you plan to use email to communicate with users of your services.

With DigitalOcean, you can’t send emails at all. They would tell you to use a third-party service like SendGrid as a relay. You can track the status of relay support in SelfPrivacy in the issue.

Last modified: June 6, 2025