HACKER Q&A
📣 404mm

Seeking a Self-Hosted Disposable Email Solution


Hey HN,

I’m looking to escape the endless spam that comes with using a single email address. Apple’s Hide My Email has been helpful, but I’m ready for something I can control entirely, and perhaps is easier to work with. Here’s what I’m aiming for:

• Self-hosted solution (I have a domain, IP, and experience with email hosting)

• Disposable email addresses (like 10minutemail.net, but self-hosted)

• No user accounts (keeping it simple)

• Virtual mailboxes based on the local part of the email address

• Ability to pre-define addresses or accept all incoming mail

• Lightweight UI (I can add auth myself)

• IMAP access is a nice-to-have, but not required

I'll be adding Postfix for added security on the inbound so I don’t need a full MTA. If there's a webmail client can meet these needs, I am open to it.

Has anyone tackled something similar? Are there any reliable solutions I’m overlooking?

I’d love to hear about any experiences—did it solve your problems or just create new ones? And for those sticking with services like Hide My Email, what’s keeping you there?

Looking forward to your thoughts!


  👤 rrnechmech Accepted Answer ✓
I know this was just a crude crude hack but I once implemented something akin to what you describe using a bunch of domains on Namecheap and their "wildcard redirect" feature, where they would redirect allusernames@foo.bar (a catch all), forwarding all email, per domain, out of all places to a self-hosted Zulip instance, so each domain would forward to a Zulip channel (each Zulip channel gets an email address you can activate and forward messages to). Worked well. Pretty neat. Of course in this particular case only cared for the incoming mails, which may or may not be your case