dbpmail.net :: A Hacker's Replacement for GMail

dbpmail.net :: A Hacker's Replacement for GMail:

Motivation

I reluctantly switched to GMail about six months ago, after using many so-called “replacements for GMail” (the last of which was Fastmail). All of them were missing one or more features that I require of email:

1. Access to the same email on multiple machines (but, these can all be machines I control).
2. Access to important email on my phone (Android). Sophisticated access not important - just a high-tech pager.
3. Ability to organize messages by threads.
4. Ability to categorize messages by tags (folders are not sufficient).
5. Good search functionality.

But, while GMail has all of these things, there were nagging reasons why I still wanted an alternative: handing an advertising company most of my personal and professional correspondance seems like a bad idea, having no (meaningful) way to either sign or encrypt email is unfortunate, and while it isn’t a true deal-breaker, having lightweight programmatic access to my email is a really nice thing (you can get a really rough approximation of this with the RSS feeds GMail provides). Furthermore, I’d be happy if I only get important email on my phone (ie, I want a whitelist on the phone - unexpected email is not something that I need to respond to all the time, and this allows me to elevate the notification for these messages, as they truly are important).

Over the past several months, I gradually put together a mail system that provides all the required features, as well as the three bonuses (encryption, easy programmatic access, and phone whitelisting). I’m describing it as a “Hacker’s Replacement for GMail” as opposed to just a “Replacement for GMail” because it involves a good deal of familiarity with Unix (or at least, to set up and debug the whole system it did. Perhaps following along is easier). But, the end result is powerful enough that for me, it is worth it. I finally switched over to using it primarily recently, confirming that all works as expected. I wanted to share the instructions in case they prove useful to someone else setting up a similar system.

This is somewhere between an outline and a HOWTO.

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