this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
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Is there a selfhosted webmail client or solution that downloads and stores emails locally? (alien.top)
submitted 1 year ago by Redux28@alien.top to c/main@selfhosted.forum
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Hello all, i am not sure if plain webmail is the right category for what i'm looking for.

I already have a mail server running in a hosting VPS that has been running for years and handles sending and receiving emails without issues or being flagged as spam, what I'm trying to accomplish is:

  • Handling the storage of very old and large mailboxes (imap 20gb+) to my local server since my VPS is runing out of space.
  • Continue using the VPS email server to receive/send emails. Since i'm not at all interested in selfhosting the email server and dealing with all those issues.
  • Multiuser since several family members have the same issue.
  • Selfhosted so we can check/send email from any device/mobile.

Something that works similar (but obviously not selfhosted) is adding a POP3 account to Gmail/Outlook/etc and then adding the "send mail as" SMTP credentials of the server. I would like to replicate the same but selfhosted if possible.

Is there anything that works like this?

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[–] borouhin@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

IMO, you're overcomplicating things a lot. You already have a working mail server, which is not easy to setup and maintain. Adding another mail server and redistributing mail storage / routing mail between the two will drastically decrease stability and may affect deliverability of your mail as well.

Why not just add storage to the existing VPS? If your hosting provider doesn't provide such option, you can mount third-party S3-compatible storage (rclone mount works great, a few hundred Gb on Backblaze cost virtually nothing) and store your mail there.

[–] Redux28@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You may be correct and it looks like this might be the cleanest solution to my problem.

I could even try to mount my local storage using wireguard and NFS. But I imagine network issues or downtime while receiving mails could mean big trouble, but that's only an issue if I selfhost the storage and not pay for third party storage.

In my mind i was so sure that something already existed that was both a webmail client and also supported local storage of email lol, for some reason still it just makes sense to me.

[–] borouhin@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

You call it "webmail client", but if it stores email and serves it to other clients - it's already server anyway :)

And you mentioned you need to "check/send email from any device/mobile". You're probably not going to use webmail from mobile (it must be a disappointing experience)... so you need IMAP on this "client-server" too. At least you can keep SMTP part unchanged on your VPS and send via it directly... But if you have something like ActiveSync (SoGo etc.) - things get more interesting. Even without ActiveSync, CalDAV/CardDAV also can be an additional problem if you need to archive old calendars as well as mail... etc.

Considering all these nuances that may arise in course of implementing your idea, I've suggested an easier way.