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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)

#221

Post by yellow_postit »

starbugs wrote: post #32
Naac wrote: post #15

A ( somewhat ) happy medium between hosting your own email ( and dealing with getting IP blocked ) and fully entrusting youtself to Google is to use webmail as provided by your domain name registrar. For example, gandi.net provides web mail on your own domain. Even, better, it has support for wildcard email just like google does.

gandi.net doesn't support external domains. I'd be thankful for any recommendations that aren't totally overpriced and allow for external domains.

FastMail and ProtonMail both support external domains on their paid tiers.

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

#222

Post by n3storm »

Every now and then this comes out.

I would like this to be true (really) and it can be true only if only you are the only mail system user.

As soon as you give an email account to a non techie and non email politeness aware user you are doomed. Like your windowsxp user mum with a compromised outlook express sending crap to full addressbook. Your friend is sending last penis graphic joke to their (gmail/msn) friends. Dad has used email to register to many dark sites and now all *@yourdomain.com receive viagra offers and they ask you to stop receiving that. Girlfriend is trying to send a 1GB video to her workmates.

But then, one user mail system does worth the effort?

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

#223

Post by swiley »

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.

This is not a problem I have or have had using a self hosted mail server on and off for nearly a decade now.

What I have had an issue with is the network (the whole ####ing network, those guys are less than helpful) I’m on getting added to spamhause(I think?) and people setting up their (smaller) mail severs to blindly reject mails from networks like that. That’s really dumb and I’m glad for things like dkim because of it.

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

#224

Post by swiley »

mlrotter wrote: post #27

I feel like if people are gonna take back email this process needs to be easier; like a single application with a web front-end. Hosting email is a pain! This is why everyone seems to outsource their email hosting. Read the comments in the 2017 discussion. Favorite quote: "I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible." https://news.ycombinator.com/…

It’s almost trivially easy with opensmtpd IMO.

I think Debian also has a GUI for setting one up.

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

#225

Post by berkes »

Aaronstotle wrote: post #117
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I'm somewhat new to the game but my email server has had very few problems delivering anywhere (hosting a small business' email, and personal email for the employees.) I've got spf, dkim, and dmarc. I use tls on everything. Got a static ip (linode) with rdns. I've never had a problem delivering to gmail. For a while i had problems delivering to Hotmail/outlook, but participating in some sort of junk mail repor…

Which mailserver are you using? I'd love to try hosting my own email.

I would advice to try with mailinabox.email . It is very opinionated, which, for a beginner, is a good thing with mail.

I'd encourage everyone to try this on a tiny droplet or linode with an unimportant domain (don't just migrate your entire companies' exchange into it on a Friday afternoon). It takes you an hour tops, after which you can poke around and see all the moving parts that make a good mailserver tick.

You'll also be contributing to a stronger, more resilient internet, by making it a tiny bit more decentralized.

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

#226

Post by berkes »

JonathonW wrote: post #63
wpietri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yahoo's disposable addresses are constructed in that form (basename-keyword@yahoo.com), but I'm not sure if they support them on business/custom domain accounts. (The base name also has to be different from your real email address, but that's a fairly desirable feature for disposable addresses since it doesn't reveal the real address like the '+' suffix on Gmail does.)

Just to be clear: the plus(+) thing is not a gmail thing, it's part of the RFC for mail-addressing. A standard.

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

#227

Post by berkes »

amelius wrote: post #129
tzs wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail has never been a problem for me, even when I only had SPF, sending from my server hosted at Rackspace. But I've had my domain for 20+ years, and Gmail since 2004, so they have had plenty of time to figure out its not a spam source, so this might not have been a fair test. I just gave Yahoo a try, and that did go to spam, even though it was happy with both SPF and DKIM. I marked it as not spam, and then went and…

Can't running your own email server be done through pulling a well-curated library on a daily basis?

Not a library, because a mailserver consists of a lot of moving parts and external configuration (DNS etc).

mailinabox.email is probably close to what you want, though. It's opnionated and my tip is to follow those opinions to the letter (or use another such project).

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

#228

Post by Jaruzel »

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 do two things:

1. Send mail via a static IP (that I pay extra for)

2. Send all mail through a reputable 'smarthost' (mine is provided by my ISP as part of the 'business' package).

This fixes all sending mail problems. For extra fairy-dust, I added SPF records to my mail server IP.

The BIG problem is Spam. Unless you pay for an intermediary spam filtering service, you will NEVER be on top of it. After self-hosting my own mail system for decades, I am now seriously planning a migration to Office 365.

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

#230

Post by berkes »

jjav wrote: post #165
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.

> your free off-the-shelf virus and spam filters suck compared to the big companies seeing billions of messages per day gmail spam filtering is quite bad, in both directions. Legit email goes to spam (even when sent from gmail itself) and spam does get through. The basic open source tools are actually very, very good at it. I get about 0-2 spams a month, everything else is caught by either my postfix configuration or…

Indeed, I'd argue that a selfhosted learning spamfilter will be far more attuned to your personal mail-regime than one that has to do 'well enough' for millions of users.

The latter will catch new spam tricks easier. But the former will be trained by you. For you. For your niche, using your lingo and so on.

To take an extreme example: let's imagine you are the ITperson for a doctors' practice aimed at people with sexual disfunctionality. One thing is for certain: using Google or Outlook for your mail is a disaster waiting to happen.

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