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Alexis Ohanian

Helm Personal Server - A personal server for owning your email and more

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Business Dad with Alexis Ohanian
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Helm is a secure personal server that makes it incredibly easy to own your online identity - starting with email. In 3 minutes, you can set up Helm in your home with a custom domain and have email, calendars and contacts services that work with all of your devices and is accessible from anywhere in the world.

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Andreas Duess
Looks like an interesting idea, but what about spam control? Part of the reason I am paying google for a gsuite account for my personal email is the fact that I very, very rarely see spam.
Joseph Paul
@andreasduess Hosting my own mailserver and getting tons of spam mail straight to their own folder. ;) So the available open source software for spam detection is really reliable. Therefore, it shouldn't be too hard for the helm guys to implement proper filtering.
Cody
Great design! I noticed that you said it will only run on one domain per device. Would be a game changer if I could point multiple domains to a single point like this. I run multiple business and have a ton of gsuite accounts. Something like this with multiple domain support would save me a lot of money.
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@rdbrdd Thanks for the feedback - multi-domain support is on our list of things to look at based on comments from people like you.
Anna Filou
@rdbrdd yes, I second this! Would be fantastic and make so much sense for business owners!!
Joseph Paul
Quote from your website: "When you use an email provider like Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo!, your personal emails are stored on their servers, making them a target for hackers and phishing." – assuming that you have remote access to my Helm, how are your servers different from Google's in not being a target for hackers?
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@jsphpl We don't have remote access to Helm servers.
Joseph Paul
@new_user_417c623f9f but they're pulling software upgrades from your servers?
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@jsphpl correct. These updates are signed by keys that are securely managed by us. Each Helm server will verify the signatures before applying an update.
Joseph Paul
@new_user_417c623f9f … and those keys are airgapped and/or otherwise secured, so this is not an interesting approach for hackers, right? What about your DNS and routing services? I think by providing centralised infrastructure, you're just as big a target for hackers as any other provider like google? Well, by taking over your routing and DNS services, a hacker could not read the mail stored on my helm, but at least they could impersonate me. The approach you've taken is probably a pretty good tradeoff between privacy/control and maintainability of a mail server, especially regarding its spam reputation.
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@jsphpl Yes, they are air gapped with a signing ceremony that requires the coordination of more than 1 designated employee.
Joseph Paul
Is the device hackable? Meaning: can i, as the owner, see what's going on internally, extend the software, run custom software on it? In other words: Can i really OWN the device?
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@jsphpl We will be announcing a developer program to support this
Joseph Paul
Gianni D'Alerta
You can do most of this with a synology nas... form factor is much smaller. Also depending on the processor, ram, and internet connection from the home to the outside world maybe a problem. Home internet is spotty at best. The design is nice if you want to showcase it, but most people would probably prefer to hide it. In a design sense it serves to other purpose. The only thing drawing me is the HSM key, of which there are not many possbile solutions out there, specially ones that are easy to use. Would highly suggest that they make a version of the server that can be put in a rack, closet, hidden, simple clean compact form factor. Servers for the most part are boxes and ugly, its great if they look pretty and or nice, but its not like a pc or something there you maybe plugging in headphones, cameras etc, and you have to make it visible at times.
Sam Tyurenkov
I think it's important to list hardware in a product placement. e.g. 4 cores, 4 TB Ram and such. So what are the specs? Can I run my Debian-Nginx-Varnish-PHP webserver on it?
Dirk Sigurdson
@sam_tyurenkov sorry for not including the tech specs. You can find details here: https://thehelm.com/pages/techno...
Kelly Kuhn-Wallace
I’d be more likely to lease server hardware than buy. Multiple domain functionality is critical too.
Giri Sreenivas
Maker
@kkdub Thanks Kelly. Stay tuned for more ways to become a customer...
John Lamerand
love product, look forward to Australia roll-out
Charles Magnuson
I'm really confused about how this server thing works. I already own my own domain and hosting through NameCheap. Registration for that domain costs me $99/year. Would I be able to move that domain over to Helm? Would I be able to keep all my existing settings and configuration when I move? What does the Helm interface look like? What does it look like when I access my Helm server? I'm left with so many questions after looking through the Helm website.
Dirk Sigurdson
@magnuson To use your own domain you need to change the nameserver records at your registrar to point to our DNS servers. Once you've done that we provide DNS management tools so that you can replicate your current DNS setup. Configuration of the Helm is done through a mobile application and access to email is through standard email clients.
Josh Reyes
This is cool guys. As an email geek and crypto nerd, I'm a huge fan! I had a few quick questions though... 1) Wasn't the whole point of email moving to the cloud, to enable access on any device anywhere? If I move my email to Helm can I still reliably access it on the go? 2) Assuming I can access it on the go. What upload speeds would I need? I live in Australia, and our internet is god awful.
Dirk Sigurdson
@josh_reyes Yes, you can access it from any device from anywhere. Your home internet upload speed isn't super critical for email. If you download a large attachment you may see some performance impacts if you have very slow upload speeds. For me personally I've been testing with 3-5 Mbit up and it works great.
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