template: post
title: Maddy: the five-minute mail server
author: flewkey
timestamp: 1641781240

I am waiting at the airport this evening, cursing the weather for delaying my
flight for so long. I’ve already bumped my
[packages](https://git.sdf.org/flewkey/flewkey-overlay), so I might as well
gush about some software that I adore.

A few months ago, [cricket](https://cricket.piapiac.org/) published a
[blog post](https://cricket.piapiac.org/blog/openbsd-mail-server/) outlining how
she configured her mail server on OpenBSD. Reading this post made me consider
self-hosting my email as well, since Yandex is a pain in the neck to deal with.
However, configuring a mail server seemed annoying as well, so I put it off.

A few weeks later, I learned about the
[Maddy Mail Server](https://maddy.email/),
a moment which forever changed my life. The server is a single daemon with a
sane default configuration, requiring no significant dependencies by default.
It is so simple and foolproof that even I could set it up. After packaging it
for Debian, guided by the
[installation instructions](https://maddy.email/tutorials/setting-up/),
it was smooth sailing.

### Installing maddy
* Install package
* Make certbot keys readable for maddy
* Set the domain name in the config
* Start the daemon
* Add the DNS records
* Make an account
* Connect an email client

### Conclusion

Setting up maddy is as easy as configuring NGINX. It only took me five minutes
to get up and running.
There are no more excuses: self-hosting email is easy now. If you are
interested, please give it a go.