We got all excited when we found that there was a mail app for nextcloud, but our disappointment was immeasurable and our day was ruined as it doesn’t actually come with a mail server.
We think it’s imperative for nextcloud to have an email server option with allocatable emails for different users if it wants to be a complete ecosystem. Missing this feature will still mean reliance on some third party service or a messy wiring with self-hosted mail server which introduces its own headaches.
We read these too just in case anyone is wondering:
Is there some arcane principle-adjacent reason why it hasn’t been made yet? or is it just that no developer has yet bothered to do it? We know for example WordPress plugins team strictly does not allow email clients with send functionality as it clashes with their corporate side of business, so figured we ask.
Or is it perhaps in the backlog of things to implement? We’d like to hear any news of a nextcloud mail server.
There exist many mailservers in the field, so an additional mailserver not really is needed.
On the other hand Nextcloud will be installed in an existing environment, where users use an own mailserver or groupware. Not everybody is able to maintain a mailserver, because there are many dangerous details, you will have to pay attention to.
So the best way always is, to use an existing mailserver and allow IMAP and SMTP-access by Nextcloud mail app.
If you want to use an own mailserver, have a look on Mailcow.
Speaking of danger, running your own thing is always dangerous. The entire nextcloud ecosystem is dangerous to begin with. The fragile peace here is mostly maintained because nobody has bothered to add nextcloud to prodding bots’ objectives yet.
On the Wordpress front for example we are getting around 5000 prodding attempts daily by bots checking for vulnerabilities and trying passwords (monitored by cf). We’re stopping them with server-side and cloudflare-side security, and we’re doing the same with nextcloud just in case, but the same can’t be said for most who just launch nextcloud and call it a day.
We don’t think wanting such a core feature included in the “AIO” is a outrageous ask per say…
We’re very interested in keeping the whole thing within AIO, since it’ll be a lot easier to maintain and secure, and because there’s a lot of strange scoring systems, security features, and indexes that have to do with an email’s originating address and the domain’s originating address. It’s an uphill battle trying to get enough ip and domain reputation so your email doesn’t get dropped, and the configuration is also somewhat difficult; doing it all over again doesn’t sound pleasant. (it can also be a problem if emails arrive from multiple origins, for example wordpress automated emails coming from server X, personal emails coming from Y, and business emails coming from Z).
Besides, it makes sense for AIO to have it since it’s supposed to have everything. We’d just want to allocate an employee a nextcloud account with storage, access to our infra, an email address, and let them rock it.
The point is for it to be easy, and not having do multiple things on multiple separate locations so many times to get it done for multiple people in a company.
If it was just the mail-server we would make it ourselves, but the real ask is deep integration with nextcloud ecosystem.
