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Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#61

Post by lucb1e »

jdmoreira wrote: post #13
bensbox wrote: post #10

I am running my own mailserver for several years now and it is quite possible. The problem is, that your IP is new to the other MTAs and you need a couple of months to build up the reputation. Services like the one from Microsoft have forms, where you can delist yourself from their blacklists. Even though you are not blacklisted, it helps for the reputation if you fill out the forms with the MTAs you have problems wi…

Yes, I think this is a great part of the problem. My IP doesn't have any reputation. But how do I build one? I send a very small volume of emails, I'm just one person.

Same for me, I'm just one person. After a while you've mailed enough hotmail users that hotmail will accept it as non-spam. Google is trickier, they can get away with a lot more because (even when I explain why it happens) people assume I'm doing something wrong when it's google that configured their spamfilter.

Eventually though, gmail will typically accept email from home IP addresses. Google apps for business seems to be even trickier than that: they have an opt-in strict setting which blacklists (outright rejects) anything remotely suspicious. It'll tell you where you stand through delivery failures, but it also means you'll end up having to call whomever you're trying to reach.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#64

Post by lucb1e »

timdeneau wrote: post #32
waits wrote: post #23

I've been running my own mail server on AWS for about 3 years now. Postfix, Dovecot, and a Rails app I wrote for webmail. At first I had 0 deliverability but over time it's improved to near 100%. Just setting up SPF, DKIM, not being on a blacklist, and building up a reputation of good mail seems to have worked wonders. I've been wanting to move to DigitalOcean but I don't yet know if there will be a significant hit o…

If you change IP addresses when moving to DigitalOcean it will reset your reputation and deliverability. Speaking from recent experience.

Can confirm IP address change will reset 97% of reputation. Domain reputation is almost negligible and content is also much less important.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#65

Post by lucb1e »

ams6110 wrote: post #24

Are you running it out of your house (e.g. a residential ISP). If you are you'll probably never have much success, all the major email providers block residential IP addresses.

> all the major email providers block residential IP addresses.

Not really. They'll suspect them, especially ones that newly start sending email, but only very rarely block them.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#66

Post by TheMog »

lucb1e wrote: post #57
TheMog wrote: post #29

I've been running my own MTA for about 15 years now, so it's definitely possible without spending the majority of one's waking hours to do so. Even when I switched mail server IPs twice over the last few years I didn't run into the issues you ran into. A large part of it depends on where you run it - if you, say, run it on your home Internet connection that's usually an immediate strike against you because of the ins…

> if you, say, run it on your home Internet connection that's usually an immediate strike against you While true, some IP addresses were not previously used, either by home connections or by anyone, so you may be in luck there. There seems to be a correlation with my latest IP switch (three years ago or so) and less mail server trouble. Most services are also smart enough to learn to trust IP addresses after a little…

Being able to use a previously unused IP address is usually a good thing, pity that there are so few of those left.

ISPs definitely seem to have an impact as well, but some spamfilters at least used to automatically assign a negative score to anything originating from an IP block used by an ISP for domestic Internet connections.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#68

Post by colejohnson66 »

Nux wrote: post #59

It's absolutely possible to run an email server in 2016 and I encourage anyone capable to do so! Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it. Every day more and more people are moving to Gmail/Hotmail/Outlook and while I do understand the reasons, it also puts more and more power into the hands of these providers and the little guy (us) gets more screwed (like marked as junk…

Burn how do you ensure your mails aren't tossed in the spam box of the big ones?

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#69

Post by ctrlc-root »

tezza wrote: post #47

Linode + Postfix successfully for years. Reverse DNS very important and the SPF Linode have excellent setup documentation ( https://www.linode.com/docs/email/postfix/email-with-postfix... )

I have been running this setup for a few years now and it's great. I used to have a problem with GMail rejecting a lot of forwarded emails as spam but I set up graylisting (http://postgrey.schweikert.ch/) and since then I haven't had a single email rejected. It probably also matters how long you've been running your server so I would expect (assuming you're not actually sending or forwarding spam) to see the number of rejected emails decrease over time.

Re: Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

#70

Post by lucb1e »

ebbv wrote: post #12

It's gonna be really hard. I work at a hosting company and our staff has to work constantly to make sure people's servers get taken off of spam blacklists, or IP blocks of ours need to get removed, etc. There's a lot of stuff to navigate out there, basically kludges that have been put in place because email is just such a terrible, insecure system. I'm sure if you're willing to put in the effort you can do it. But fr…

To be fair, your viewpoint is very different from OP's. Where OP is trying to run a one-person mail server, you probably manage thousands of IP addresses and VPSes, which makes for a lot of abuse and effort on keeping reputation, and is an entirely different ballpark.

Therefore I'd advise OP to keep at it, not just switch to a hosting company. Also for the learning experience, though that is secondary.

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