Deploy a fully functional and secure Postal server in minutes. If you found this valuable, please donate so we can continue to bring the world open source resources.

Overview

This is an example of an Ansible repository that will automatically deploy Postal SMTP server and secure it for you. It does require a little background in server administration and how Ansible works.

This entire setup supports the following features:

• 🚀 Automatic installation & configuration of Postal
• ⚡️ Deploy a brand new server in under 6 minutes (even on a slower server)
• 😱 Automatic configuration of HTTPS & TLS for secure emails & web GUI Access (via Let's Encrypt)
• 🔐 Secure server management with hardened SSH (passwordless, disabled root login, and custom SSH ports)
• ⏫ Automatic server security updates (Postal updates are still manual though, but very easy...)

What is Ansible?

Ansible is a tool that you install on your computer that will connect to your server over SSH and configure it for you. If you are not familiar with Ansible, we highly suggest that you read Ansible's Getting Started Guide. This will help you understand the most important concepts and how to install it on your local machine.

⚠️ Special Notes ⚠️

This code has been running in production and has been running well for us. Few important notes for you to understand:

• It has been tested on Ubuntu 18.04 only
• We see improvements how this repository could be organized better, but it is the first release and we just wanted to focus on getting the code out there for people to reference

Preparing your server

The remainder of this document will walk you through how to deploy and configure your Postal server.

Choose your Cloud Provider

You can self-host this, or go with a cloud provider. Cloud providers will probably be the fastest, so we'll take how to do this on your own VPS in the cloud.

System requirements

• At least 2GB of RAM (for the smallest Postal instances)
• TWO Static public facing IP addresses (if you plan to use Click & Open Tracking)
• We've only tested this Ansible deployment with Ubuntu 18.04

Recommended providers

DISCLAIMER: The links below are affiliate links. This kicks back a few bucks to us for the referral, but does not cost you anything extra to you. Affiliate programs do not influence our recommendations in any sort of way either. These are the best recommendations available.

Vultr

Pros

• Simple setup with two IP addresses
• Reliable and affordable

Cons

• [Vultr blocks port 25 by default](https://www.vultr.com/docs/ what-ports-are-blocked). You need to contact support to have it unblocked

(We already had our stuff unblocked, so the rest of the guide will follow Vultr)

Digital Ocean

Pros

• Reliable and affordable
• Supports second IP address with "floating IP"

Cons

• Digital Ocean uses "Floating IP Addresses" for their secondary IP addresses. This uses some form of NAT (they use Openstack) for floating IPs and can break certain things on some software. No reports with Postal yet, but it has done this for other softwware.
• You cannot set PTR records (reverse DNS) on Floating IPs. So if you plan to send mail through more than one IP, look for a different provider

Linode

Pros

• Reliable and affordable
• Supports second IP address

Cons

• Getting a second IP address might be a little political on why you need it

AWS. Azure, Google Cloud (We personally never tried it, but pretty sure it will work)

Pros

• You can do almost anything with these providers

Cons

• It is more expensive

No matter who you choose...

Self hosting email is a major pain in the butt. Some spam filters will block entire blocks of known IP addresses for VPS providers. If you continue on this adventure, sign up for these tools minimally to monitor your sender reputation:

• https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/SNDS/index.aspx
• https://www.gmail.com/postmaster/

Configure your SSH keys

For best security, make sure your SSH keys are configured and added to your Vultr account.

Deploy an Ubuntu 18.04 server

You can get a simple Postal server through Vultr for as little as $10/mo.

Be sure to select/configure:

• Any region that you want
• Ubuntu 18.04 x64
• A server with at least 2GB of memory
• Your SSH key that you have added to your account
• A proper DNS name for your server (our example is mypostalserver.521dimensions.com)

Add your "A record" for your server to your DNS

Our example is mypostalserver.521dimensions.com, so we added an "A record" that points to our IP address that Vultr gave us.

Add your secondary IP address (if you plan to use Click & Open Tracking)

Going back to the Vultr portal, go to "Settings → IPv4" then click "Add Another IPv4 Address". You may also need to restart your server through the Vultr control panel in order for your IP to apply to your account!!! (that means NOT just running the command reboot)

⚠️ VERY IMPORTANT: Configure the Reverse DNS for your "Main IP"

Now you should have two IP addresses, but we need to configure the reverse DNS to point to the same DNS record that you added above for your server (our example of mypostalserver.521dimensions.com). Without this step, your email will fail to deliver.

View your networking configuration

Although the secondary IP address has been added to your account, you need to configure your server. Click on the "networking configuration" link to see your exact configuration that you will need to add.

Apply your secondary network configuration

While having the network configuration open in your browser window, you will want to open program window so you can SSH into your server.

Connect via SSH

Replace mypostalserver.mydomain.test with the DNS name that you chose.

ssh [email protected]

Clear your current configuration

Since we can copy and paste from Vultr, the easiest is to just clear the current configuration. Run these commands on your server.

echo "" > /etc/netplan/10-ens3.yaml

Modify your configuration

Then copy the configuration to your clipboard from the Vultr site. We can open the (now empty) configuration with nano.

nano /etc/netplan/10-ens3.yaml

• Press CMD + V to paste
• Press CTRL + O (that is an "oh", not a zero) to Save
• Press CTRL + X to exit the nano text editor

Prepare server for Ansible

Now that we have the configuration ready we just need to:

• Update the "apt" package caches on the server
• Install "python" package on the server for Ansible to run
• Update all other packages on the server
• Remove old packages on the server
• Reboot the server (for our networking changes to take effect)

You can do this all in one command by copying and running the below command on your server:

apt update && apt install -y python && apt upgrade -y && apt autoremove -y && reboot

Validate both IP addresses are responding to ping requests

After the server reboots, ping both server IP addresses to make sure that you configured everything correctly.

Configure Ansible on your machine

We're assuming that you have Ansible downloaded and installed on your machine.

You can confirm Ansible is working by running

ansible --version

Download this repository

Repo can be placed anywhere on your system. Just choose a location that works best for you and that you remember where you place it. You will need to modify the example commands to match the path that you chose.

Configure your variables

There are three areas that you need to configure:

"hosts" file in the Ansible repo

You will see under the [postal] group, there is a place holder of mypostalserver.mydomain.test change this line to match the properly configured DNS name that points to your server's main IP address.

"group_vars/all" (variables that will apply to all of your servers)

Modify this file to your satisfaction. Follow the comments in the file of what needs to be modified.

"host_vars/mypostalserver.mydomain.test"

Rename this file to match exactly what you have it set to in the "hosts" file within the Ansible repo. Open this file and modify it according to the comments.

Run the Ansible playbook (from your machine -- not the server)

Once you have everything configured, we can finally get to running the "Ansible Playbook". Run this command to start the deployment on your own machine:

ansible-playbook -i /path/to/your/downloaded-repo/hosts /path/to/your/downloaded-repo/postal.yml

☕️ Grab a cup of coffee while this runs, it should take a little less than 6 minutes to complete run.

Validate your server deployed correctly

After your server is finished deploying, validate the following functions:

Web GUI should load and have a valid SSL certificate

Visit https://mypostalserver.mydomain.test and see if your page loads. Make sure the SSL is valid.

SMTP port should support TLS

Run the following command. Replace mypostalserver.mydomain.test with the DNS name that you chose.

openssl s_client -connect mypostalserver.mydomain.test:25 -starttls smtp

You should see a response like the one below showing us that it is working.

Make your "postal web GUI user"

To make a user so that you can log into the Web GUI, run the following command while connected to your server via SSH:

postal make-user

You will be prompted to fill out a few details your new user.

Configure click tracking

Configure your DNS to add an "A Record" that points your tracking domain to the secondary IP address of your server.

Once you are able to ping and verify that your DNS is resolving to the correct IP, you then need to register your email with Let's Encrypt to get a valid SSL certificate deployed for your click tracking.

Run this command on the server:

postal register-lets-encrypt [email protected]

Enjoy 😃

You've now successfully deployed your Postal server! From here on out, you can find how to use Postal on the official documentation.

The official documentation will be the best resource on how to do everything, but the steps we suggest doing from here are:

1. Create your organization
2. Create your web server
3. Add the domains that you plan to send from
4. Follow the validation settings and configure all DNS records for each domain you add
5. Validate your settings by sending an email to https://mail-tester.com

If you need to make any adjustments

If for some reason you need to make any special adjustments, see these files within the repoistory:

1. host_vars/mypostalserver.mydomain.test (all variables you can change)
2. roles/postal/templates/opt/postal/config/postal.yml.j2 (the actual template that gets deployed)

Asking for help

• If you want community support (responses are from volunteers at soonest-availability basis), open an issue on Github →
• If you want professional support (guaranteed responses within one business day), you can contact 521 Dimensions and we'll get in touch for billing details

As always, if it is a Postal specific question, you can browse the issues on Postal's Github.