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The “mail is hard” myth

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Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#281

Post by dwd »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #223
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…

You can't actually measure deliverability with dmarc reports. They will only tell you the portion of emails that are bounced, but they don't differentiate between email in inbox and email in spam folder.

Wrong word - delivery rather than deliverability. You just want to know about the SPF and DKIM fails.

Last thing you need someone on a self-hosted email server is running EDM campaigns.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#282

Post by mike-cardwell »

gfodor wrote: post #136

Number of times I have had the problem of "email not working for some reason" since switching to gmail ~20 years ago: zero. Number of times I had this problem when running my own mail server (and presumably would have today): non-zero. There's your entire explanation as to why this is a losing battle. Just one incident of an email delivery problem probably outweighs any privacy risk wrt using a centralized provider w…

I self host my personal email. We use gmail for work.

Gmail randomly filters github commit emails into Spam for us. It randomly filters messages from our own hosted domain, that pass DMARC into Spam.

As far as false positives go, for me, Gmails filtering is crap. Much worse than an untuned SpamAssassin setup.

They have crap filtering, a crap web UI, and crap mobile apps. And yet people still use them.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#283

Post by jjav »

Email infrastructure is very important for an open and interoperable Internet, way too important for us (techies) to abdicate it to gmail. That alone is a good motivator to run your own email services. Of course, there are other benefits.

"It's way too hard" is a HN meme I've noticed regularly. It's really not, if you have any tech skills or the willingness to learn.

I set up my email server in two days between jobs in 2011 and it's been running with minimal attention ever since. I don't have precise numbers, but to try to give some context I'd say about 2-4 hours a year worth of maintenance.

Over the years I've expanded it to handle a few more domains (consulting companies for self and family members). No issues.

To anyone even slightly interested or curious in the technology, just do it. You'll gain some freedom, gain some experience and help (even if just a grain of sand) decentralize the Internet. Don't fear the naysayers.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#284

Post by roel_v »

number6 wrote: post #35
the_jeremy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Running my own for about 2 years now. Spf dMarc and dkim set it is accepted by all mail providers. I also get daily reports from Google how well it behaves

"I also get daily reports from Google how well it behaves"

Do you ever read them? If so, how is daily (!) routine maintenance of your email setup not a massive (well, relatively speaking) headache?

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#285

Post by roel_v »

eythian wrote: post #38
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,…

The article points it out, but it used to be harder than it is now. These days (for a long time now, really), it's hard to set one up that's, say, an open relay by accident. The default configs are pretty much all you need, just replacing a couple of values with those that are custom. Basically, what you're saying is exactly what they're debunking. Also, the article isn't "just execute these 20 commands", it's delibe…

So despite your claim that it's 'very easy to do', in the very next paragraph you are basically saying that you need to be around people who 'mention in passing' obscure details of email server configuration, otherwise it will 'make a lot of difference'? I mean it seems you disagree with me at first, but then in the rest of your post you seem to be making my point for me, so...

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#286

Post by roel_v »

al_form2000 wrote: post #241
roel_v wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The config file format is the least of your worries (unless you're running Sendmail, ofcourse). It's about havimg to know about DKIM/SPF/dns weirdness/ etc, and having to stay up to date; about blacklists and greylists and the social dynamics around it; about mailbox storage and backups and users complaining about quotas and attachment sizes and that sort of shenanigans; about how will I let my users set auto respond…

The config format is the least of your worries also if you're running sendmail - which I do.

You're a much braver soul than I have ever been :)

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#287

Post by roel_v »

pdonis wrote: post #260
roel_v wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The config file format is the least of your worries (unless you're running Sendmail, ofcourse). It's about havimg to know about DKIM/SPF/dns weirdness/ etc, and having to stay up to date; about blacklists and greylists and the social dynamics around it; about mailbox storage and backups and users complaining about quotas and attachment sizes and that sort of shenanigans; about how will I let my users set auto respond…

> just send them a link to the sieve man page! That would work if mail providers actually used Sieve, but almost none of them do. I've never understood why.

...

Can't tell if you're serious or not - but if you are, just looking at man sieve is enough to understand why no sane person would give an average end user access to that. I mean I used it for many years but I'm a nerd weirdo.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#288

Post by al_form2000 »

roel_v wrote: post #286
al_form2000 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The config format is the least of your worries also if you're running sendmail - which I do.

You're a much braver soul than I have ever been :)

Yeah, that's the folk wisdom on sendmail. But really, since version 8.0, writing your own .cf (or reading it) should have been regarded as bizarre as crafting your own object files with an hex editor. And sendmail has served me well, over the years; its scariest feature (sendmail.cf) is also a strength - as a Turing complete programmiong language, it allows you to tie your incoming/outgoing mail in square knots, if you feel so inclined, or to solve some unforeseen mail routing configuration/problem/whatever. Of course, if you find someone that has gone to the lenght to write a _LOCAL ruleset that does it - and alas that is a creaft I do not possess, and is dying out. When it does, I will probably make the postfix jump.

I cannot claim prescience, because I started ont the trade when sendmail was THE mail program (though ed was no longer THE text editor): but consider, had I listened to the sendmail bashing crowd a couple years later I would have gone qmail (!!!). For not having done that, I thank the almighty weekly.

Re: The “mail is hard” myth

#289

Post by majewsky »

austhrow743 wrote: post #273
Youden wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the "more" things many other services provide is far better privacy. European law is much more protective of human rights than American (where Fastmail hosts its servers and emails are "business records") or Australian (where Fastmail is located and where even warrant canaries are illegal).

FYI there was an article on here a little while ago about a man that used GDPR to get access to all emails by his colleagues that mentioned his name.

Citation needed. This is certainly not the intent of the law. If this story is true, that mail provider ('s data protection officer) broke the law.
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