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The “mail is hard” myth

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Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#231

Post by muppetman »

gingerlime wrote: post #50
klingonopera wrote: post #13

Let's see... Postfix, Dovecot, SPF and OpenDKIM on the server-side, each of them with their own config. Then you've got to set up your domain, and domain headers on your domain host. Oh, DMARC is also another thing. Then, most ISPs will outright refuse to accept incoming mail from your IP address, since they've basically changed from blacklisting to whitelisting. So you've also got to relay your outgoing mail via you…

And if you try to host it on Digital Ocean, they actually block port 25 out, so you're out of luck... And you have to manage diskspace, backups, firewall/fail2ban, OS updates etc etc etc I'm in the same boat as you. Managed to grind my teeth and pull through something like this for my own use and family, but it was painful.

I run my primary mailserver on DigitalOcean. It seems to work fine. I think you have to have either your account, or the Droplet, active for 30+ days before they'll let you have port 25 open.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#232

Post by cortic »

Jsharm wrote: post #187
newscracker wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you just want a reliable mail service, just use... non-Fastmail options that are a lot cheaper for multiple mailboxes and provide more, like Posteo, Mailbox.org, Runbox.com, Mailfence, Migadu, etc.

I never hear Zoho Mail mentioned, I migrated from Fastmail, 1/5th of the cost and if anything slightly better interface as a bonus!

So cheap they don't even mention their prices on their prices page, that is cheap.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#233

Post by al_form2000 »

dorgo wrote: post #132
dwd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also recommend setting up a dmarc record so you can monitor your deliverability. Spam however is still a hassle and you're never going to match Gmail or Outlook when you're small. Say it takes a few hundred identical spammy emails to trigger a filter. For Gmail it means the chance of receiving that spam is less than 1 in a million. If you're small and managing say a 1000 users - a large percentage will end up…

>Say it takes a few hundred identical spammy emails to trigger a filter Wait, is this really the way how spam filters work? All I need to do is to add a random number to all emails to bypass spam filters?

In short, no.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#234

Post by eikenberry »

darekkay wrote: post #214
eikenberry wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> To falsify an argument you only need one counterexample.

If you want to apply logic like that, you have to apply it correctly. To falsify a universal claim you only need one counterexample, but the original poster never used a universal term (all, never, etc). If it wasn't a universal claim then you can't apply the rules for universal quantification to it.

More to the point, my comment wasn't attacking your logic, but that you seemed to dismiss the entire list based on the one example. I didn't see where you mentioned you were happy with the alternatives and only critical of the one, if that was the case then I just missed the larger context and I apologize.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#235

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

gfodor wrote: post #202
pera wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody weights privacy (and decentralization and control) vs convenience in the same way. By the way, how many times did you get locked out of your Gmail account vs how many times did the same happen with your own server?

Not once. Tbf, I am considering the herculean task of getting off of gmail, but if I were to go with my own server the burden has basically nothing to do with setting up the email server (easy) as this post might suggest, but instead the burden and latent risk involved of having to be personally responsible for operating, maintaining, and being exposed to externialities (like 0days, being blocked by filters, server o…

> being blocked by filters

That's the part that I really don't understand. If the recipient hired someone to throw away their emails, why would that possibly be my job to rectify? I sent them a legitimate email, they hired someone who promised them to throw away spam, but obviously is incompetent at doing so, so it's up to them to hire someone else!?

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#236

Post by eikenberry »

al_form2000 wrote: post #230
eikenberry wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 yea…

UCEPROTECT was the pits and its operators were unprincipled lowlifes. Luckily they (like all the pay-to-delist BLs) never got more than minimal traction, so ignoring them and their BS mostly worked ('course you needed a /19 to be effective at doing that)

You use past tense... why? They still exist and seem to be continuing their blacklist/blackmail BS. The ISP in question was AT&T and their subsidiaries (I mostly got hit sending to bellsouth.net), which I wouldn't consider to be that small of an ISP and was enough that I eventually gave up.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#237

Post by jojoo »

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've been running a mailserver for ~15 Years.

I found it to be very time consuming and complicated, mainly because of the trouble of outgoing mail.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#238

Post by temptemptemp111 »

jasode wrote: post #185
amelius wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is a fancy way of saying “it requires a bunch of work, continuously as the rules change over time”. Wouldn't this be a good task for an open-source package to handle? If you'd just updated the package regularly, your mail would always be sent according to the rules. No need for any third-party handling your mail.

>Wouldn't this be a good task for an open-source package to handle? If you'd just updated the package regularly, your mail would always be sent according to the rules. Some of the "rules" for reliable outgoing email delivery cannot be encoded inside the source code files of a github repo, or email setup bash script, or a Docker image, or a EC2 virtual image, etc. An example of an unspecified "rule" outside the bounda…

However, would be sweet for a bunch of mailserver experts to converge on a docker-compose or swarm file for an optimal setup.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#239

Post by stevedzreams »

cortic wrote: post #232
Jsharm wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never hear Zoho Mail mentioned, I migrated from Fastmail, 1/5th of the cost and if anything slightly better interface as a bonus!

So cheap they don't even mention their prices on their prices page, that is cheap.

https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#240

Post by jojoo »

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…

> A mail server is hard.

yeah, but compared with other services like WWW mail is IMO harder. You deal with two main Protocols and a lot of software. While mail takes 11 components in your tutorial, you'd get a website in 4. And some parts are hard to debug. I have very little means to debug why my mail wasn't delivered to my bosses gmail.

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