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The “mail is hard” myth

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Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#211

Post by scarface74 »

nocman wrote: post #179
scarface74 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"When you eat home grown vegetables, the experience isn’t objectively worse. When you run your own mail server it is." ^ I both run my own mail server and use someone else's service for another purpose. My experience running my own mail server is objectively WAY BETTER than using the commercial provider (and I've been doing this for many years in multiple scenarios). Just because your experience (even if it is repeat…

It’s not “just my experience”. It’s practically a universal experience that the chance of emails sent from your mail server will be blocked or go into a spam folder a lot more frequently than using a commercial provider.

Of all the questions I have to answer on technology decisions, why would I want to answer why did I choose to run my own bespoke mail server instead of spending a few dollars and making it someone else’s problem and so metaphorically chose IBM - ie “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#212

Post by slenk »

bluedino wrote: post #123
fareesh wrote: post #41

Which user demographic is running one's own email server ideal for? My consultancy handles "all things technology" for multiple small businesses (sized 1-50 people, located mostly in South Asia). Anecdotally: A lot of these folks are happily using mybusinesname.accounts@gmail.com and so-on, but decide to get their own domain for the added veneer of "professionalism". Many are happy to use Yandex (1000 users with your…

Lots of businesses run their own email server. It's not that complicated. The easiest way to do it is to buy an email server, you can use Exchange or you can use something like iMail or Kerio. Install that on a server, get a static IP from your ISP, put the server behind a firewall, and point your DNS servers for your domain to it. Then generate an SPF record, and you should be good. That's how many people do it. As…

Most removal from spam lists that I have had to deal with so far has been entirely automated. (Microsoft, some of the big lists).

I haven't actually had an ISP block me yet, but I also run my mail server from a VPS, so I don't have to send it from a residential line.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#213

Post by slenk »

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,…

No, it's not a gigantic PITA anymore. Yes, _15 years ago_, which is what everyone's reference time frame seems to be, it was hard.

Now, there are many solutions that with 1 click do all the painful integrations.

https://mailinabox.org/, https://mailcow.email/, https://iredmail.org/

So please, everyone, stop saying mail is hard now when you don't have any recent experience. A lot has changed in 15 years

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#214

Post by darekkay »

eikenberry wrote: post #208
darekkay wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and provide more, like Posteo Thanks for mentioning some alternatives, but I've just checked the first example and it does not support custom domains (which Fastmail does), so it does not "provide more".

Hasty generalization. Many of those in that list support custom domains. Only checking the first and applying that to all is just lazy.

Where did I apply it to everything? To falsify an argument you only need one counterexample. I'm happy with all the alternatives (as mentioned before), but I'm not happy with a claim that can be falsified with the first example.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#215

Post by awinter-py »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #177
awinter-py wrote: post #153

this article doesn't have the word 'security' in it

And why does that matter, please?

I think one of the hard things about operating any server is securing it.

If the author is arguing that 'mail is easy now' you can't make that argument without addressing the security aspect. I hate google and I still use gmail because their project zero team is so good.

Big consumer tech companies are finding their own ways to make this argument: apple with privacy, google with security research, even facebook with providing better privacy controls, although this isn't in their DNA and they'll fail. More products are supporting MFA/FIDO now.

If 'mail in a box' etc are going to convince me to self host (which I would love to do), security is the missing piece.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#216

Post by eikenberry »

ogoffart wrote: post #140
skrause wrote: post #16

I think the biggest pain in hosting your own mail server is getting your outbound mail delivered into the mailboxes of the large providers without being marked as spam. Especially if you don't actually send a lot of mail, so you can never really build up a good IP reputation. That's why I generally recommend a hybrid setup: Host inbound mail completely by yourself so that you have full control, but ship off outbound…

> I think the biggest pain in hosting your own mail server is getting your outbound mail delivered into the mailboxes of the large providers without being marked as spam Why do you think that? The article mention exactly this could just be a myth that perpetuates because people repeat it without actually trying it. In fact, I used to think exactly like you when I originally set up my personal mail server and opted fo…

> Why do you think that? The article mention exactly this could just be a myth that perpetuates because people repeat it without actually trying it.

Not sure about OP, but many people have tried it and it is a PITA. Even once you have everything setup right (SPF, DKIM, etc.), you still have to deal with IP issues. I ran my own mail server for years (actually, still do for incoming) and it worked fine for about 10 years until I needed to switch providers and got a new IP. Then I found I had to deal with an IP with no reputation and IP whitelist/blacklists. The deal breaker was finally dealing with blacklists that you had to pay to keep off of.

UCEPROTECT was the one at the time. They would randomly add my provider's entire IP space to one of their lists and during those times all email to a couple ISPs would bounce and the only way to get my IP whitelisted from those blanket bans was to pay $$. Switched to using an external provider for outgoing mail and haven't had a problem since as they take care of that crap.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#217

Post by jcranmer »

brianpgordon wrote: post #207
jcranmer wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Keep increasing the PoW cost and think about where that line of argument leads you. "One message delivered to the inbox is worth far more than a billion messages delivered to the spam folder." One single delivered message is going to be profitable for the spammer? Clearly not. This proves the existence of some break-even point at a lower cost. Mail providers just need to set the cost above this point.

Given that spammers mostly use others' computers to blast their email out, I suspect that the price point that would truly throttle spam would be higher than the price legitimate users of email would be willing to pay. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable in spam and black market economics to throw any actual numbers around.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#218

Post by uijdihrihr »

ogoffart wrote: post #140
skrause wrote: post #16

I think the biggest pain in hosting your own mail server is getting your outbound mail delivered into the mailboxes of the large providers without being marked as spam. Especially if you don't actually send a lot of mail, so you can never really build up a good IP reputation. That's why I generally recommend a hybrid setup: Host inbound mail completely by yourself so that you have full control, but ship off outbound…

> I think the biggest pain in hosting your own mail server is getting your outbound mail delivered into the mailboxes of the large providers without being marked as spam Why do you think that? The article mention exactly this could just be a myth that perpetuates because people repeat it without actually trying it. In fact, I used to think exactly like you when I originally set up my personal mail server and opted fo…

I work in the industry and it's no myth. Even using expensive relay servers doesn't guarantee the big email providers will deliver your or mail or care much to explain why it isn't being delivered. Big email won't even respond to their own customer complaints that they aren't receiving email.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#219

Post by dundercoder »

kbenson wrote: post #155
octorian wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You switch to a third party mail provider for the same reason you buy a new car instead of driving around your classic you've been fixing up as a daily driver. Not because you don't like it, but because sometimes there's benefit in offloading the annoying bits of your hobby so you can focus on the interesting bits. Fixing up an old car is fun. Doing it in chunks of a few hours so you can drive it work the next day is…

I love the car analogy. Once something becomes your lifeblood, tinkering is much less fun.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#220

Post by [deleted] »

jcranmer wrote: post #85
brianpgordon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if these big mail services accepted actual proof of work as a way to guarantee that your mail gets through. Maybe someone could extend SMTP with a bitcoin-like challenge where the server sends the client a nonce and a difficulty factor, and the client has to reply with a suffix that you can append to the nonce so that the whole string hashes to something with the corresponding number of zeroes at the…

> People sending personal emails will be happy to burn a penny of CPU time as "postage" but spammers won't be able to send their spam profitably The problem with this idea is that spammers don't use their own computer, they borrow other people's computers to send the spam. It also heavily penalizes people who legitimately need to send bulk email.

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