Do you trust Synology?

[hugo]

Basically I have a Synology NAS (no synology cloud account) I am hosting my own email server with MailPlus.

Do you trust sysnology?

hugo

[tijl]

Hi Hugo,
Can you specify what you mean with “trust”? In terms of privacy, support,…?

I can say that MailPlus Server from Synology is using Dovecot (open-source) for accessing and storing mails (IMAP, POP3,…) and Postfix (open-source) for receiving and sending mails (SMTP,…).
They packed and configured it to make it usable and accessible for most users, which they did a good job at.
This is also the case with their other mailserver (Synology Mail Server). MailPlus Server is more integrated with other Synology services and has a nice webmail server with lots of useful features which looks like the one from GMail. I don’t know which software they use for that, maybe their own. But it’s a really good one.
I haven’t heard of privacy issues with MailPlus Server. I don’t expect there are.

As long as you can make backups from your stored mail and easily can transfer them to another mailsystem, MailPlus Server seems a fair choice.
This is not always the case with some other apps from Synology where you can get locked in, like DS Notes which stores in proprietary format with no possibility to export.

Note that

• Synology packages have way less customizability and configurability than the original software they use. It can take years before they implement a simple feature request which was already there but not accessible trough their interface. But on the other hand it is way user-friendly, updates are easy and automatic, and you have support.

• Also Dovecot and MailPlus (so also MailPlus Server) accesses the drives (both read and write) every so and then, even when literally nothing is going on. Your Synology NAS will never go in sleep-mode/stand-by again.

• As far as I remembered there is no option to connect the webmail (MailPlus) to a server with your contacts (CardDAV,…). You could use MailPlus for that but the contacts are not (externally) accessible but in MailPlus itself.