How to host websites in one Linode and e-mails in other?

The basics are these. Set up one Linode for your website, this is where you'll point www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com to in your DNS records. The other Linode you set up will have a different hostname, we'll call it mail.mydomain.com for this example. This is where you'll point this DNS record, then you'll set up your MX records to point to the mail.mydomain.com Linode. Once this is done, proceed with setting up your mail server as you normally would, by following which ever guides you like.

Don't forget to appropriately set up your RDNS records as well, and anything else required. Good luck.

Blake

I do the exact same thing…. BUT instead of a 2nd. Linode running something like Mail-In-Box, for about the same monthly fee you can get an account with a cheap web hosting company that will give you virtually unlimited email domains and use them for email. I use Pair Networks for this, but they are few bucks more expensive than others (and a Linode nano server.)

The A records point to your web sites on Linode and the MX point to your mail boxes on the ISP. Works great and you don't have to pull teeth installing and maintaining a mail server.

YMMV.

Works great and you don't have to pull teeth installing and maintaining a mail server.

I'm assuming Al is talking about Mail-in-a-Box here… Speaking as someone who has run a postfix mail server for many years, mail servers are delicate creatures that need special care and feeding. Managing them is not simply a matter of tossing them food once in awhile…they need constant care (if you care for it everyday, you'll avoid big vet bills).

Once you get your server working, you'll enter the world of making sure you're server is a good citizen in the email world: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, spam filtering, auto-filing, etc. Most of this stuff is not for the faint of heart. Mail-in-a-Box may do some of the initial setup but it certainly won't take care of your routine care (how many of you out there change your DKIM public key periodically?)

If I were you, I'd do a lot of homework before embarking on this quest.

-- sw

For about one year, I ran Mail-in-A-Box for a couple of my domains about 3 years ago on the smallest Linode available.

It ran quite well.

But Steve speaks the honest truth here.

To put it bluntly, I think it is "best-practice" to leave mail service to people who have both the experience and the tooling to keep the spam out, to keep off the black lists, to block known bad-actors, and to deal with constant updates.

You are not going to save any money by using a 3rd party but you will save a lot of time and mental anguish by leaving this to someone else.

I urge you to listen to Steve and me. We know what we know!

YMMV.

Thank you all for the help and information. Very helpful! :)