At 26 October, 2020 Sebastian Nielsen wrote:
why not just point them at a hosting service like google apps, and let google keep things up to date?
Oh they most certainly do :)
Costs money, and also the problem is that gmail imposes heavy spam filters and "reputation blocks" meaning smaller providers with low email volumes, are put in the spam folder, even if they never send spam, just because their email volume is so low (ergo, they must prove they don't spam before getting out of ispam folder)
OP is trying to come up with a solution to handle transactional email within members of the office and some vendors/clients, not bulk email like you're describing. As for "costs money", well everything in life does. You can't get a branch office's email system setup for free.
Another thing is that you cannot impose IP restrictions when using Google Apps, or have SSO with trusted access from inside the office. (for example - scan your badge at the office door, your personal computer is automatically logged on and you get access to everything).
Eh, sure -- I suppose if the country you're operating in doesn't have open communications with google ( https://transparencyreport.google.com/traffic/overview ) then yeah, you're gonna have a hard time. But this seems like a stretch for an argument against using a hosting provider.
With locally hosted servers, of course you have to keep them updated. Most linux distributions can keep them updated automatically.
My question was directed at OP as it sounded like they were coming in to
set something up once then moving on in life. I wouldn't say that _any_
major linux distro updates automatically. Rolling OS distros like arch
are constantly getting wedged and requiring a bit of manual attention to
nudge things along. Distros like fedora can sorta kinda run with a dnf upgrade happening in a cron if you like to... I guess. Maybe something
like RHEL can be set and forgotten, but if you're paying for a RHEL
license then you're likely not going to abandon the host.