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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?

#131

Post by jwr »

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…

> Email is one of the bastions of the decentralised Internet and we should hang on to it.

This.

I hope someone will eventually create an "E-mail server in a box" package for Ubuntu LTS, so that more people can run their own E-mail. I'm not saying it has to be super-easy for everyone, just that it should avoid unnecessary chore work (like configuring postfix to always use TLS, or plugging postgrey into postfix).

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

#132

Post by mehdym »

1. Creating a good IP reputation takes time, get a static IP from your ISP and gradually increase number of sent out emails.

2. Having multiple IP addresses and throttling helps if you send bulk emails.

3. Check email headers of spammed emails, they usually contain valuable info about the reason of being detected (SPF/DKIM ,...)

4. Check the contents of your emails and find out spam score of the content.

5. You can look into commercial solutions like: www.own-mailbox.com

6. Hillary, if it's you, don't do it again!

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

#133

Post by bks »

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…

Sending email this way is typically known as smart hosting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_host. It's a pretty reliable way of sending out email if your IP has a less than perfect reputation. In this instance less than perfect could be something completely out of your hands.

Are you an EC2 user, well there is a black list for those IP's. Are you on a residential connection or a dynamic IP... there is a black list for that also. So you may have a perfectly configured MTA with a pristine IP and still have delivery issues. Using a smart host is perfect in these situations.

It's been mentioned before but part of running your own mail server is the process of learning and tweaking things to your liking. I remember the days when you could run a server on your own home connection on port 25 without any issues - but those days are long gone. A crucial part of every sys admins journey historically has been setting up and configuring a personal use mail server.

You can always run a mail server at home on a port other than 25 and have an upstream email service deliver it to your alternate port.

So if you'd rather not deal with filtering your own spam, or would like a excellent smart host with SPF and DKIM - let me know.

I'll provide commercial spam filtering with backup MX or smart hosting services to any HN user for 50% off from duocircle.com - just message me... running your own is sort of a right of passage.

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

#134

Post by jjnoakes »

PSA: If you run your own mail server and use that email address for password resets, please use a reputable hosting provider and dns provider, and turn on 2FA.

Don't let that often overlooked weak point be the way every one of your accounts gets compromised. Once they have your email, they have everything that resets via that email domain.

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

#136

Post by mrb »

djsumdog wrote: post #102
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…

Yes in theory all you need to do is update your SPF to whitelist Google's SMTP relay.

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

#137

Post by hawat »

You can deploy end-to-end solution like zimbra (community version is open source and free). Has all necessary features (DMARC, SSL, clamav, spamassasin, and s-mime), really good webmail interface, some "cloud" file storage features (briefcase!) and more. As more and more people depend on big providers like google and microsoft with they mail we should advertise as much as possible, and convert as many as we can to self hosted mail solutions. Mail is last bastion of free communication. And should last "neutral" as long as is possible. Big providers are bulling smaller ones marking mail as spam/junk or blocking entire address spaces on "we thing that we should, and we do as we thing" policy.

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

#140

Post by mhurron »

nokya wrote: post #121
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…

This completely defeats the original purpose of this HN. Why would anyone invest effort in hosting an independent email server to have all its content routed clear-text through Google's servers/databases?

I have a VPS I use as a smart host.
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