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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?

#151

Post by matthewking »

merb wrote: post #123
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…

SPF, DKIM, DMARC could be dropped if you actually use aws ses to send your mails, you can actually forward the mails there. So it's pretty impossible that your messages will be in spam. The only thing you need to manage is incoming mail now and not being a open relay.

Unfortunately SES servers seem to be regularly blacklisted. A quick google confirms. I've been using SES for 3-4 months now and had a few hard bounces with specific mention to the IP being banned.

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

#152

Post by loup-vaillant »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #95

Absolutely possible but its a battlefield on the Internet so you have to understand the players. Two things I haven't seen mentioned in all the excellent advice: 1) Does your ISP let you send email? Some ISP's will not allow any outbound traffic to port 25 from a non "business" port. They force their users to send their email to their server, and then they forward it on to the Internet. They do this with nominally go…

> mail receivers don't like [Dynamic IPs]

That's an understatement. Reading Hotmail's policy, I saw a blanket ban on dynamic IP address. Your mail won't even attain the spam box of your recipient. It will bounce right away. Other big providers probably do the same.

In many cases to successfully sending a mail from a dynamic IP is flat out impossible.

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

#154

Post by PaulHoule »

x0x0 wrote: post #124
djsumdog wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I did a similar thing 2 years ago and chose Fastmail. Their web-app is best of breed ex google -- unfortunately, the honest truth is nothing is as good as gmail web + gmail apps + google cal. Fastmail does have more issues -- lack of fit and finish, their web app is sometimes buggy, their spam detection is buggy, it's imap, the lack of gmail style conversations being the fundamental unit of work in the app shines thr…

I love fastmail. Really I do not like gmail style conversations so I prefer fastmail over gmail.

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

#155

Post by tootie »

I don't know if "run your own" means your own everything, but Amazon SES is a pretty viable option. Even if it's not, they have a pretty good checklist for keeping yourself out of spam filters: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/deliver...

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

#156

Post by loup-vaillant »

walrus01 wrote: post #108

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 re…

I don't understand. Why this over-reliance on IP based reputation and blacklist? Aren't Bayesian filters enough? Or maybe people don't know how "mark as junk" works?

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

#157

Post by loup-vaillant »

dsr_ wrote: post #113
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…

I've been running my own mail server off of a residential connection since 1998, so... 18 years. I do pay for a static IP, and I switched ISPs away from Comcast (who had inherited me as a customer) when they abruptly started to filter inbound port 25 and claimed I had a malware infestation. For years it was qmail, but when I wanted to use SMTP/SSL as much as possible, switching to Postfix was easier than maintaining…

> when they abruptly started to filter inbound port 25

Didn't you mean "outbound"?

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

#159

Post by SmokyBorbon »

jwr wrote: post #131
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).

A Vagrant box of this would be ideal.

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

#160

Post by semanticist »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #156
walrus01 wrote: post #108

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 re…

I don't understand. Why this over-reliance on IP based reputation and blacklist? Aren't Bayesian filters enough? Or maybe people don't know how "mark as junk" works?

This is at a level before 'mark as junk', where a mail provider will refuse to deliver your message at all - or potentially even refuse to accept it. The earlier the mail providers can detect/block spam the less resources they have to dedicate to storing and transmitting the spam.
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