Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!


Should I use a backup email for important business?
New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.

All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.

Should I use a backup email for important business?

I am concerned that if I host an email server myself, and the server were to go down or something else might go wrong that I wouldn't receive any messages sent during that time. Might that be a problem if I get a very important email that I need to be aware of and not loose? Should I use something like Gmail for important matters, and then a personal email for more casual use?

Comments

  • I use personal email for everything. I have primary and backup MXs with Postfix. That way even if your primary mailserver goes down, your backup will catch the mail.

    I have the same SPAM filtering on both primary and backup. I have not had an issue in over 10 years with that setup.

    I've had to get more aggressive on the spam filtering over time given the exponential growth of spam, but the false positives count is still very low.

    You should have no issues.

    Thanked by 1Azure
  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    it really depends on the impact if you had no access for 24 hours, only you know that :)

    Thanked by 1Azure
  • I just use my domain registrar to forward [email protected] to my Gmail

  • @AnthonySmith said:
    it really depends on the impact if you had no access for 24 hours, only you know that :)

    If the server went offline for a period of time, what would happen to the emails sent between that time? Would they resend or be lost forever?

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    depends on the senders policy, the senders server will usually retry 3 times over a set period of time, before giving up, 24 - 72 hours iirc is the standard policy

  • frankfrank Member
    edited November 2014

    At minimum use a Primary and Backup MX system with the Primary on a good host preferably with High Availability; If you are determined to host it yourself its better to go a for a Master-Master system but you really need to know what you are doing to set one up.

    Really business email isn't worth the hassle to do properly, especially when you can get it for free e.g. Zoho does upto 10 email accounts free on your own domain.

    Thanked by 1Azure
  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    frank said: Zoho does upto 10 email accounts free on your own domain.

    thats a good option.

  • I wouldn't call it a "business email". Mostly personal, but every now and then I might get an important email from a bank or whatever that I wouldn't want to miss.

  • trewqtrewq Administrator, Patron Provider

    @Azure said:
    I wouldn't call it a "business email". Mostly personal, but every now and then I might get an important email from a bank or whatever that I wouldn't want to miss.

    Honestly if your bank is sending you emails you can't miss, it's probably time to change bank.

  • @trewq said:
    Honestly if your bank is sending you emails you can't miss, it's probably time to change bank.

    They're not, I was just trying to think of an example and that was the best I had.

  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep

    Azure said: They're not, I was just trying to think of an example and that was the best I had.

    Probably you'll get the email eventually if it's just your server down. As people said, even if you don't have backup MX set up then the sender will still retry three times, just make sure mail server isn't down for three days straight; if you have backup then email will get sent there instead, and backup can forward to primary mail server after it comes back online (it's fairly easy to configure).

    On the other hand, if someone hacks your DNS and changes the MX to point to attacker server, then they can accept the email and sender won't retry. But then again they could just hack your hosted email account anyway.

    Thanked by 1Azure
  • AzureAzure Member
    edited November 2014

    @perennate said:
    if you have backup then email will get sent there instead, and backup can forward to primary mail server after it comes back online (it's fairly easy to configure).

    Could I have it forward to my Gmail, or would I need another self hosted email to do that?

  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep

    Azure said: Could I have it forward to my Gmail, or would I need another self hosted email to do that?

    You can't use GMail as a backup if that's what you mean, unless you have the Google Apps thing for your domain. You just need another server, it's really easy to set up Postfix as a backup MX. See http://www.howtoforge.com/postfix_backup_mx

    Thanked by 1Azure
  • I love MXRoute so much <3. Two domains with them already. Although if you want enterprise, there's Rackspace.

    Thanked by 1Droid
  • @frank said:
    At minimum use a Primary and Backup MX system with the Primary on a good host preferably with High Availability; If you are determined to host it yourself its better to go a for a Master-Master system but you really need to know what you are doing to set one up.

    How do people usually setup Master-Master? Say if I just use rsync to sync the mail folder between two servers and have both IPs listed as MX with the same priority would that work?

  • @elwebmaster said:
    How do people usually setup Master-Master? Say if I just use rsync to sync the mail folder between two servers and have both IPs listed as MX with the same priority would that work?

    Never mind, I found this tutorial which explains how to do it with GlusterFS and two servers: http://www.7layer.org/?p=313 .

  • @Azure said:
    Should I use something like Gmail for important matters, and then a personal email for more casual use?

    I think this is a good idea. You can set up more than 1 Gmail account for your business and personal use.

Sign In or Register to comment.