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The “mail is hard” myth

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Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#191

Post by andrerm »

> We can’t let that happen: allowing e-mail to be fully controlled by a small set of cooperating multi-million users hosts is just accepting to be screwed.

I agree but don't say it isn't hard. It's hard and it's not for everyone but if you can the benefits are worth it.

Now I don't think having more small mail servers will stop big mail servers abusing their power but without a significant number not small servers better just give up.

For the record I do have my mail server on a vps

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#192

Post by rhizome »

earenndil wrote: post #186

> Let me tell you a secret: Big Mailer Corps are not worried about you but are worried about big senders harassing their users. They do not care about your personal server sending a few mails, even if its in the thousands per months. What they care about is the infected computers or compromised servers flooding their users. What they care about are the marketing companies that are literally shitting over them, sendin…

the daily run outputs got us blocked by gmail

Are you sure? How many tens of thousands of daily run outputs were you mailing?

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#193

Post by scarejunba »

jcranmer wrote: post #169
brianpgordon wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make sense. Each email is only worth so much to a spammer. They can't lose money on every email and make up for it with volume.

The value to spammers isn't in email delivered, it's the actual user engagement at the end of the process. A million messages delivered to the inbox is worth far more than a billion messages delivered to the spam folder.

Yeah, but if the marginal cost of the next message is higher than the marginal expected increase in revenue then they won’t. It doesn’t matter optimizing inbox delivery rates if per-delivery you lose money.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#194

Post by raintrees »

The only "hard" part I find with running my own mail server for the last 25 years is switching platforms.

Deriving a large part of my income by supporting Microsoft software in small business environments, I have been running Exchange versions all that time. I have enjoyed Outlook as a primary business tool, and looking at the conversion strategies to move over to a *nix mail server that will support that client and the 25 years of horded emails I now store (don't mess with my jokes folder, dude) has been the most daunting part of it.

Even though I have been on Debian releases as my primary workstation OS for over 12 years now, I still have virtual Windows sessions to keep using Outlook. And granted, that also lets me simulate what my clients "see" when I am assisting.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#195

Post by scarejunba »

toomim wrote: post #145
jdboyd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience of over 15 years, the "rules" have only changed 3 times since I started. First to require good reverse DNS, then to require SPF, last to require DKIM. The transition on each of those was generally several years with plenty of publicity.

You're forgetting DMARC.

I don’t have DMARC setup and can still send to Gmail.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#196

Post by nocman »

iamgopal wrote: post #89

Making your own electric car is easier. But still I wouldn't do it.

I realize you are likely using hyperbole, but in my experience managing my own mail server is trivial compared to the complexity of building your own electric car.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#197

Post by zelly »

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…

The simplest is Yandex Connect. It's like GSuite, but the intro tier is free:

https://connect.yandex.com/pricing/connect

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#198

Post by inetknght »

defanor wrote: post #174
pw6hv wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some of my messages end up in Gmail spam folders (very recently received a reply to a message I sent 3 years ago because of that, for instance) How did this happen if Gmail deletes spam after some weeks?

Indeed, a quick search suggests that spam is automatically removed every 30 days there. The wording was "Google hid it from me", so either I have wrongly assumed that it's about the spam folder, or it is possible to disable autoremoval. Edit: or, as the sibling comment suggests, it behaves strangely with respect to removal as well.

Another instance of Google being user hostile?

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#199

Post by rhizome »

the_jeremy wrote: post #29
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,…

There's also a huge difference between setting up a properly configured server and actually getting things delivered. The big ones (MS, Google) mark your mail as spam even with SPF, DMARC, DKIM and the like. Even on the service I use (purelymail.com) the low volume of mail and the fact that it's less than a year old means that even when I email them first, the replies are sometimes marked as spam.

The big ones (MS, Google) mark your mail as spam even with SPF, DMARC, DKIM and the like.

This is such a canard. I have almost zero problems delivering to anybody from my closet server, and the only thing that has happened in the last several years was getting notices that AT&T was blocking me. I did a quick relay check and emailed postmaster@. It only took a day or two to get an email saying I was clean to them again, and that was without the DNS security extensions you mention.

Maybe cable modem users are held to a different standard? Dynamic IP addresses? I have DSL with static IPs.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#200

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #36

Everything is easy to folks that have the time to grok the tech. I like to write software. I don't like running a Linux server, although I know that i could learn to be an excellent admin. It's just that every second I spend learning Linux admin, is a second I'm not spending learning Swift. So I just use shared hosting for my sites; even though I'm perfectly capable of running a VPS.

Wow. I'm surprised that this upset anyone. I apologize for that. There was no disrespect or sarcasm meant.

I simply said that I don't run my own server because I'm not comfortable being an admin; mainly because a part-time admin (which is what I would be) is a dangerous thing.

It's bad for a Linux server to be run by an incompetent admin (that would be me), and even worse for an email server to be run by one.

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