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The “mail is hard” myth

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Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#111

Post by mynegation »

zawerf wrote: post #107

While the email experts are in this thread, can I get a guide on how to setup a simple email address @ my own domain? If you google, most of the top hits are for free mail forwarding using your domain registrar. I tried this and it was pretty terrible with a ton of caveats. For example using namecheap you can only receive but not send from that domain, can't receive attachments, and can't even send an email to yourse…

Don’t have experience with gSuite, but I use fastmail and very happy with them. The idea is you go to your registrar or DNS provider and change MX records to the Fastmail servers (they provide the host names and comprehensive setup help in their documentation).

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#112

Post by flurdy »

A mail server is hard.

Writing applications is hard. Designing a website is hard. Professional work is hard.

But setting up your initial mail server is not hard. Read some guides (ahem: https://flurdy.com/docs/postfix), fix a lot of typos, and you're up an running.

Same with developing the initial version of an application, or designing the first draft. Not rocket science. Not easy but not that hard for an experienced person with simple initial requirements.

But what is hard is keeping it running with more and more users, more requirements and evolving tech and less time to maintain it. Never mind forgotten skills and less priority.

Mail servers have a special knack for running out of disc space or going down for some reason only when you are on holiday and can not get online easily. And you usually only find out after a day or more as you start not receiving messages but don't really notice it for a while.

Or you friends, family or colleagues using it start complaining that some random person they are emailing is not receiving their email and you need to look into it... (Ps. Use DKIM and then DMARC reporting)

If you just want a reliable mail service, just use https://fastmail.com. If you want even more freedom and configurations, do try to set up a mail server. But it is hard. A bit hard.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#113

Post by scarface74 »

ekianjo wrote: post #96
scarface74 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does running my own mail server save me time, money, or give me capabilities that I don’t have by paying someone else? What other criteria should I use?

> or give me capabilities that I don’t have by paying someone else? The same can be said "why should I grow my own veggies when I can buy them from the supermarket?" - The point is always, always, about Freedom.

When you eat home grown vegetables, the experience isn’t objectively worse. When you run your own mail server it is.

If you were running your own restaurant and your home grown vegetables caused a worse customer experience would you do it? Running your own mail server which causes more of your mail to go to spam is worse than using a commercial provider.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#114

Post by simmons »

rpcwork wrote: post #68

Managed mail server clusters for years with an ISP. Agreed, too many things that can break and cause PITA. However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper you are in a trade or the longer you have done it, the easier it comes to feel. I visited a family farm and found it very very hard to squeeze milk outta buffalo. My great uncle however has dealt with that buffalo that for years and didn’t sweat it one bit. In a s…

However, ‘Hard’ is a subjective term. The deeper you are in a trade or the longer you have done it, the easier it comes to feel.

I agree with this. I don't think mail is particularly harder than other serious Linux and network system administration tasks. But it does require those sysadmin skills, and it's not something I would recommend to a typical software developer unless they were interested in broadening their sysadmin skills or had a particular need that could benefit from a self-hosted mail server.

I've been operating mail servers continuously since 1992, so I guess that's the buffalo I'm milking.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#115

Post by corford »

roel_v wrote: post #4

It's not 'hard', it's 'a gigantic pain in the ass' which is (in normal word use) one form of 'hard'. Which is why most sane people stopped doing it themselves say 15 years ago. Especially for the few cents you can get professional 3rd party email hosting for. Edit: I also very much like the disingenuity of articles saying 'X isnt' hard! Just execute these 20 commands!' Duh, executing those commands isn't the problem,…

Amen. I ran my own personal mail server for ~15 years (started with qmail+squirrelmail, moved to postfix+dovecot+opendkim+zpush+roundcube at some point). I enjoyed it but eventually just didn't have the time to care anymore.

Moved everything over to Fastmail about a year ago and haven't looked back. My inner geek still feels bad about not doing it myself but my rational brain is happy.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#116

Post by dsukhin »

I would venture a guess that even the most technically savvy users who could set up their own mailsever now, still flock to "Big Mailer Corps" for the easy to use mail client filled with useful AI features, etc. and that even in the presence of an easy alternative to set up their own, will end up forwarding to their "Big Mailer Corp" of choice that offers them the most efficient user experience for their workflow.

IMHO, the most important thing missing right now to promote more decentralzied mail is a cometivtive open source mail (web) app, with a simple UI and a vibrant plugin system for every use case.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#118

Post by crispyporkbites »

zawerf wrote: post #107

While the email experts are in this thread, can I get a guide on how to setup a simple email address @ my own domain? If you google, most of the top hits are for free mail forwarding using your domain registrar. I tried this and it was pretty terrible with a ton of caveats. For example using namecheap you can only receive but not send from that domain, can't receive attachments, and can't even send an email to yourse…

There’s many options, but it boils down to two approaches:

- pay someone to send and receive your emails (eg. update your MX records to point to gsuite, fast mail etc)

- host your own mail server (something like http://mailu.io/ will work), basically you’re going to need a program that listens for and stores incoming emails, and a program that sends them, plus all the glue inbetween (IMAP, pop3, webmail, storage etc etc)

If you’re going for simplicity, then the first option would be the easiest. I think Zoho offers this for free for one address, and it works just fine.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#119

Post by octorian »

flurdy wrote: post #112

A mail server is hard. Writing applications is hard. Designing a website is hard. Professional work is hard. But setting up your initial mail server is not hard. Read some guides (ahem: https://flurdy.com/docs/postfix ), fix a lot of typos, and you're up an running. Same with developing the initial version of an application, or designing the first draft. Not rocket science. Not easy but not that hard for an experienc…

> If you just want a reliable mail service, just use https://fastmail.com. If you want even more freedom and configurations, do try to set up a mail server. But it is hard. A bit hard.

I used to run my own mail server, but I eventually migrated to Fastmail. I liked then because their software stack was similar enough to mine (compatible filter rules) and I knew where to find their admin on IRC.

The reason I made the switch is because I was sick and tired of my Email reliability depending on the reliability of my home Internet connection, and my co-lo/remote-hosting situation (at the time) had different reliability issues I didn't want to risk.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#120

Post by octorian »

dsukhin wrote: post #116

I would venture a guess that even the most technically savvy users who could set up their own mailsever now, still flock to "Big Mailer Corps" for the easy to use mail client filled with useful AI features, etc. and that even in the presence of an easy alternative to set up their own, will end up forwarding to their "Big Mailer Corp" of choice that offers them the most efficient user experience for their workflow. IM…

> a cometivtive open source mail (web) app

Yes, this is a big deal. So many web applications provided by companies as "cloud services" are orders of magnitude better than equivalent web applications you can run on your own damn servers.

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