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How to run your own mail server (2017)

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Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#201

Post by voltagex_ »

zigzaggy wrote: post #194
77pt77 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I use "." as the separator. Now try using an email from a domain name with more that 3 letters in the TLD. Almost no one considers that a valid address.

So if I bought my “name.rocks” I’ll have trouble using that as an email? I was looking forward to “firstname@lastname.rocks” and I never even considered it would be a problem. I’m disappointed

I have something similar - I haven't had many problems with the not being accepted online. The few times I've had issues are with old point-of-sales or appointment booking systems.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#202

Post by nullwarp »

wpietri wrote: post #156
wvh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run my own mail server for receiving, but send through a commercial provider (Fastmail). I also use user-sub@domain style email addresses. If I have occasionally have to send email from those addresses, I edit the From line in the Fastmail web interface or my email client. I don't have a problem setting up a full email server, but I don't want to babysit it for just one person using it. I have too many real life ob…

Interesting! Maybe I should try doing the outbound via Fastmail or some other provider. I couldn't shut down my mail server entirely, but it might solve my deliverability issue.

I use postmark to do my delivery. They support outbound smtp that my internal postfix relays to and you pay per email even tho they gave me so many free credits I havent paid anything.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#204

Post by wcip »

zigzaggy wrote: post #194
77pt77 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I use "." as the separator. Now try using an email from a domain name with more that 3 letters in the TLD. Almost no one considers that a valid address.

So if I bought my “name.rocks” I’ll have trouble using that as an email? I was looking forward to “firstname@lastname.rocks” and I never even considered it would be a problem. I’m disappointed

I have a .help domain for handing out to services and it works without issue.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#205

Post by goatsi »

wpietri wrote: post #30
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

Agreed! I've been running my own mail server for 20+ years, and I would not recommend that anybody do this on a lark. Deliverability to GMail is a huge problem for me and has been for years. I even asked friends at Google to find out what the story was. All I got back is that the mail group was so careful/paranoid it wouldn't talk to them either. I would long ago have switched over to a vendor, but I use qmail-style…

I use Migadu.com for my email and they allow you to create regex based catchalls [0]. I have one that accepts every email address that begins with "cat". it makes it dead simple to create a fresh email for new services.

[0] https://www.migadu.com/en/benefits.html#anchor_catchalls

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#206

Post by jlgaddis »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #186
zepearl wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on - nowadays most domains are non-".com"... .

That's not even remotely true. I've worked in cloud/web hosting for years and 99% of users are using .com domains. Yes more new users may be registering ccTLDs or gTLDs but that's generally because they're cheap. And because they're so cheap it creates a nuisance as spammers use them. Look a the .xyz tld. It gives you a hugely negative score on any sort of mailbox spam scoring algorithm.

I used to keep statistics on this, although I don't anymore. I remember seeing one day that not a single e-mail I received was a .info domain was legit -- that is, 100% of e-mails received from any .info domain was spam.

No idea if that's still the case, though.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#207

Post by kikoreis »

dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

I have run my own server for the past 20 years. I don't spend a lot of time maintaining it but managed to enable SPF, DKIM, etc as they rolled in. The most disruption I have faced has been changing connectivity providers and IP ranges. But even then I have been able to insist on being allowed to relay and removed from blacklists consistently. I think it is important some of us do it even if most people live off big provider webmail.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#208

Post by xelxebar »

dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

Be sure to have a PTR record in the DNS zone of whomever owns your IP address. I have DKIM, SPF and DMARC setup, but my mails were getting sent to spam before rDNS was configured correctly.

More to the point, I discovered this by reading Google's postmaster/bulk mail guidelines. All the other major email providers have similar guidelines, so definitely consult those as a first reference if you are having problems.

There is no mail conspiracy. As always, the problem is DNS.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#209

Post by a-dub »

jjirsa wrote: post #11

EVERYONE did this for decades. Then EVERYONE stopped because it's awful. Modern ISPs don't like SMTP floating around, (DKIM, DMARC, SPF) are a pain to maintain over time, exploits will happen, and your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day.

my thoughts exactly. it used to be fun to provide hosting and email for yourself and friends, but then constantly upgrading and tweaking spam filters was just a huge waste of time.

from what i understand, the gmails, yahoos, outlooks, whatevers of the world basically make it hard on purpose to make their own jobs easier.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#210

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

I have been running my own mail server for over a decade, and still do. However, last year I had to throw in the towel and configure my server to send via an SMTP relay that my hosting provider (transip) provides. That solved all problems I had with sending to the big mail providers.
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