Helm, Ars Technica Approved

Reviews are in — Helm earns Ars Technica’s seal of approval by Senior Technology Editor and security guru, Lee Hutchinson.

Ars Technica’s Senior Technology Editor and security guru, Lee Hutchinson, setup Helm and put it through its paces. His deep-dive into the mail stack and flow, encryption, hardware, software, and setup experience left no stone unturned. Hutchinson writes:

“If you’re looking to kick Google or Microsoft to the curb and claw back control of your email, this is in my opinion the best and easiest way to do it.”

“Normal folks and long-time sysadmins alike will find a lot to love here.”

“There are significant benefits to self-hosting your email, but they come with significant downsides, too — most notably, you’re on the hook for any mistakes or problems… Looking after an email does occasionally require work — a responsible sysadmin needs to keep up with updates, keep an eye on the log files, check regularly on RBLs, be mindful of deliverability and sender reputation, and other miscellaneous sysadmin-y tasks. It’s not overly onerous, but it’s not hands-off, either.”

“Helm aims to give you the best of both worlds-the assurance of having a device filled with sensitive information physically under your control, but with almost all of the heavy sysadmin lifting done for you.”

Read Lee Hutchinson’s full review and summary on Ars Technica, Review: Helm Personal Server gets email self-hosting (almost) exactly right.

In October 2018, Ars Technica’s Security Editor, Dan Goodin, wrote that the Helm Personal Server combines the “security of a private server with the reliability of the cloud.”

After reviewing the launch of Helm, he discusses how Gmail has fundamentally changed the way we think about and use email. Speaking about Gmail, Goodin writes, “It’s free, it gives most of us all the storage we’ll ever need, and it does a better job than most in weeding out spam and malware. But there’s a cost to all of this.” Goodin goes on to discuss how this convenience comes at the cost of corporations storing years’ worth of consumer messages ultimately giving them less control over their data.

Goodin writes, “The [Helm] service takes a best-of-both-worlds approach that bridges the gap between on-premises servers and cloud-based offerings.” “The server also provides a robust number of offerings designed to make the service extremely hard to hack…”

Read Dan Goodin’s full review on Ars Technica, Meet Helm, the startup that’s taking on Gmail with a server that runs in your home.