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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?

#101

Post by nilved »

mrb wrote: post #88

One little trick that I rarely see mentioned for working around the negative or neutral reputation your MTA's IP might have is that you can route your outgoing emails through another MTA that has a higher reputation. For example route them through smtp.gmail.com (or for other options see https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?hl=en ). It does not mean you have to use Gmail. It does not mean you have to change you…

There is no way that Google is not recording messages sent through smtp.gmail.com.

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

#102

Post by djsumdog »

mrb wrote: post #88

One little trick that I rarely see mentioned for working around the negative or neutral reputation your MTA's IP might have is that you can route your outgoing emails through another MTA that has a higher reputation. For example route them through smtp.gmail.com (or for other options see https://support.google.com/a/answer/176600?hl=en ). It does not mean you have to use Gmail. It does not mean you have to change you…

Huh..never thought of this. I run my own e-mail server on a Linode. I have constant trouble not being classified as spam. I did a whole post on it:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-...

The sad reality is, I'm thinking of moving my e-mail back to someone else. It might be Fastmail, might be Amazon. Running my own e-mail server is a pain and I hate having to send people a message on Facebook or Reddit saying, "I sent you an e-mail. Check your spam folder."

If I route my e-mail through Gmail's SMTP server as a relay, that shouldn't affect my DKIM/SPF stuff right? I'd just have to change SPF/DMARC to say gmail is allowed to relay messages for me, correct?

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

#103

Post by cmdrfred »

lucb1e wrote: post #74
cmdrfred wrote: post #50

I did almost exactly what you describe and it works flawlessly, but I only send a small volume of mail (my own). Digital ocean droplet $10 a month, but it would run on a $5 one if you don't also have caldav/sftp/kerberos/vpn/etc there like me. Fun Fact: Microsoft Exchange has no native support for DKIM and tons of business run that in house, often on 'business class' connections without correct reverse IP records.

> Digital ocean droplet $10 a month I don't know whether OP uses a home connection, but that makes a big difference. It has some pros and cons: A VPS (with its dedicated IP address): - Usually has a good reputation, though you might have bad luck. Switch early on when you notice this. Doing it later just nullifies any trouble you had building its reputation. - Is hosted somewhere in the cloud. (I used to hate the ter…

There is also a third option, set up a OpenVPN server and connect the home hosted SMTP server to the internet though it, gives you the best of both worlds I figure.

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

#105

Post by madez »

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…

I disagree with you. I consider email legacy technology because of its reliance upon DNS and static IP addresses. These two requirements make hosting email unnecessarily costly.

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

#106

Post by rahkiin »

I will not repeat what everyone else has already said, but I can add one thing. You need to 'warm up' your IP address. You need to send a lot of non-spam email. MTAs will A/B test it: mark some as spam, mark others as not spam. Then they see if they get user spam reports or non-junk reports. They don't know you. The more you send (successfully, if everything is marked as spam by receivers it won't work), the more they start trusting you.

SparkPost allows the use of dedicated IPs and it has a warm up time. They tell everything about it in [0].

[0] https://support.sparkpost.com/customer/portal/articles/19722...

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

#107

Post by lwhalen »

darkhorn wrote: post #100
soneil wrote: post #81

It's worth checking whether you're running IPv6. It does become very relevant. e.g., SPF records need to include it, it must also have a good rDNS, etc. In particular, I know gmail hold IPv6 to higher standards. Some things (e.g. rDNS) that we traditionally treat as 'should', gmail will treat as 'must' over IPv6 - it's being treated as a chance to drop a lot of legacy leeway. I do run my own MTA. It's not high-mainte…

What is MTA?

Message Transfer Agent. Compare with MUA, MDA, etc. Lots of WTF TLAs when trying to build SMTP over TCP/IP, etc. :-)

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

#108

Post by walrus01 »

Having a perfect smtpd that speaks TLS 1.2, has properly set up dkim, sfp and dmarc records, working reverse DNS, etc is sadly not enough these days if you use a commodity vps/VM host. IP block reputation matters as well. Sadly, some other customers in your same /24 have been less clueful than you within the recent memory of major SMTP operators(gmail, office365/Microsoft, etc) and your IP space probably had a bad reputation.

Reputation perception by opaque large SMTP operators will not show up in RBLs and other ways to check for blacklists. You cannot query your IP block's status unless you happen to personally know a senior sysadmin on their mail operations teams. They don't share this information because it would help spammers choose new "clean" places to spam from.

One solution is to Colo your own 1u system with an ISP that is known to have very stringent zero tolerance abuse policies. Typically not one that is a commodity hoster.

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

#110

Post by walrus01 »

mverwijs wrote: post #16

Been running it for over 15 years. No SPF. No dkim. Never had complaints, though threads like these have me worried.

There is no excuse for not having SPF and DKIM signing set up in 2016/2017. Bet you don't do opportunist TLS 1.2 either?
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