I’ve been using Cloudflare Email Routing for about 2 years now with a wildcard setup. It works great for receiving emails at generated addresses like [email protected], which helps me track who has my info and organize my inbox.
The main issue is that Cloudflare only handles incoming mail. When I need to reply to someone from that same alias address, I have to use my real email instead. This breaks the whole privacy thing I was going for.
I’m looking into self-hosted email alias solutions like Addy.io or similar tools. My main questions are:
Will running my own alias service have the same headaches as a full mail server (spam issues, IP reputation, etc.)?
Do I still need to use an external SMTP service like AWS SES or Mailgun?
How do these alias services handle outbound authentication?
Are there any major security or delivery concerns I should know about?
I already use AWS SES for other projects, so I was thinking of just adding verified identities there and connecting the alias service to those SMTP credentials. Has anyone tried this approach? Looking for real-world experiences with self-hosted email aliasing setups.
i’ve been using addy.io for like 8 months now. setup was super easy - way less hassle than running a full mail server. definitely use external SMTP like SES tho, don’t send directly or you’ll get blacklisted. web interface auth is smooth, just plug in ur SMTP creds. don’t forget to check ur domain records for SPF/DKIM!
Self-hosted email aliasing hits that sweet spot between running a full mail server and dealing with third-party limits. AWS SES is absolutely the way to go here. Your alias service basically acts as a proxy for forwarding while SES handles the actual delivery.
Security’s way better since you’re not storing mail or dealing with complex MTA setups. The biggest headache I hit was bounce handling - some services won’t forward delivery failures back to you, which sucks for important emails.
Don’t forget backup MX records and monitoring. If your alias service crashes, you’ll lose incoming mail unless you’ve got failover ready. Authentication’s pretty smooth with SES though - IAM roles mean no hardcoded SMTP passwords.
Running an alias service is way simpler than managing a full mail server. You skip most email hosting headaches since you’re just forwarding messages and using established SMTP providers for delivery. Reputation issues? Barely any, because your outbound mail still goes through reputable services like SES. Your AWS SES approach works great - I’ve done similar setups with both Addy and SimpleLogin. Domain authentication is key though. Make sure your SPF record includes your SMTP provider and get DKIM configured right. Most alias services handle authentication headers automatically once you give them valid SMTP credentials. Watch out for rate limiting on your SMTP service - some providers cap daily sends, which might bite you if you’re a heavy email user. Also, test reply functionality hard. Corporate email systems can be real picky about forwarded messages with modified headers.