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Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

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Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#21

Post by singron »

brenden2 wrote: post #12
CallMeMarc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting your own email service is way more difficult than just spinning up a smtp server and some interface. Most big providers (like gmail) are more likely to flag incoming mails from unknown servers. That's the reason why stuff like Sendy[1] is so popular. You host your own interface, settings and so on, but the ugly part of sending your email is handled by AWS SES. [1] https://sendy.co/

That's only true if you're spamming people a lot. Running your own postfix server is trivial, and you'll have a fine reputation so long as you aren't sending marketing BS.

I found many servers will block you if you first send them email (e.g. greylisting). If you can get them to send you an email first, then everything tends to work from then on.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#22

Post by p1mrx »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #15
brenden2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only true if you're spamming people a lot. Running your own postfix server is trivial, and you'll have a fine reputation so long as you aren't sending marketing BS.

Running own SMTP server for personal use is hard . Google is the worst adversary just because of their market share. I have a mail server for personal use, and I send less than 10 mails per day for many years. DKIM, SPF, DMARC are all properly set up. I am signed up to all possible postmaster tools, including that of Google. Still, Google started blocking mail sent from my IPv6 address in December. I switched to IPv4…

> DKIM, SPF, DMARC are all properly set up.

Does the IPv6 address have matching forward/reverse DNS?

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#23

Post by Tomte »

rolleiflex wrote: post #19

I think this is a more modern alternative to Sendy ( https://sendy.co/ ) which is a little cheaper. (no affiliation except being a user) Sendy does look like it has more features though - and it has been around for far longer, corner cases debugged and all. I’d love to hear how this is any different from Sendy.

I can read the installation instructions of Sendy and say "yup, I can do that. Upload a file, point my web browser towards it".

I read the installation instructions of MailCoach and wonder whether this Composer thing is what I would use if I had a server that's not a DigitalOcean server, and whether this is something I can install without becoming a PHP wizard.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#24

Post by PavlovsCat »

ultrarunner wrote: post #7
lykr0n wrote: post #2

Awesome. We can never have enough of high quality self hosted software.

As someone who has been out of the PHP game for a long time, is it still a viable choice for new software? I don't have fond memories of the language at that time, so seeing PHP in the demo video poster frame was an immediate mark against pitching this at my company. That made me wonder whether it's a reasonable reaction to have. Edit for the downvoters— this is an honest question and I very much agree that we can ne…

For me, the main reason I like it is that I love my cheap shared webhost. I've been with them for 13 years and they're rock solid, the price stays the same and the amount of space, traffic and DB and general admin options just keep getting increased. Should they ever go away, all I need is PHP and MySQL, no special modules or fancy .htaccess required. Every single file is code or data, I like that. At least the way I use it, which is very modest in scope, it's like making portable apps... whereas all the modern stuff with installation and deployment processes are more like things you need to install and which write settings to some registry, to the point they run in virtual machines. That's just overkill for me and what I do.

I'd rather "everybody" was able to develop simple sites like I am able to, than me being able to make some super fancy shit. I generally don't pour time and energy into tech and companies that don't benefit "the little man" should the little man show interest, and if in doubt, I prefer things that have been around for decades, for making things that I might want to keep using and expanding for decades, too.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#25

Post by lykr0n »

robjan wrote: post #9
ultrarunner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has been out of the PHP game for a long time, is it still a viable choice for new software? I don't have fond memories of the language at that time, so seeing PHP in the demo video poster frame was an immediate mark against pitching this at my company. That made me wonder whether it's a reasonable reaction to have. Edit for the downvoters— this is an honest question and I very much agree that we can ne…

PHP is getting a lot better these days. There is still a lot of clunky legacy syntax but the performance and features are pretty much on par with other scripting languages now.

Even better in some cases. PHP is slamming raw c function calls for some stuff, which makes some operations as fast as compiled binaries.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#26

Post by corobo »

Tomte wrote: post #23
rolleiflex wrote: post #19

I think this is a more modern alternative to Sendy ( https://sendy.co/ ) which is a little cheaper. (no affiliation except being a user) Sendy does look like it has more features though - and it has been around for far longer, corner cases debugged and all. I’d love to hear how this is any different from Sendy.

I can read the installation instructions of Sendy and say "yup, I can do that. Upload a file, point my web browser towards it". I read the installation instructions of MailCoach and wonder whether this Composer thing is what I would use if I had a server that's not a DigitalOcean server, and whether this is something I can install without becoming a PHP wizard.

Composer is the apt, yum, dnf, npm, pip, etc of PHP

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#27

Post by Tomte »

corobo wrote: post #26
Tomte wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can read the installation instructions of Sendy and say "yup, I can do that. Upload a file, point my web browser towards it". I read the installation instructions of MailCoach and wonder whether this Composer thing is what I would use if I had a server that's not a DigitalOcean server, and whether this is something I can install without becoming a PHP wizard.

Composer is the apt, yum, dnf, npm, pip, etc of PHP

And it's a hurdle when the audience is small non-tech businesses wanting a newsletter.

For a dev company, maybe even integrating it into one of their applications, great!

Sendy targets very much the former ones. I just assume MailCoach does, too, but I don't really know.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#28

Post by PetahNZ »

rolleiflex wrote: post #19

I think this is a more modern alternative to Sendy ( https://sendy.co/ ) which is a little cheaper. (no affiliation except being a user) Sendy does look like it has more features though - and it has been around for far longer, corner cases debugged and all. I’d love to hear how this is any different from Sendy.

Sendy has abysmal performance for large lists though.

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#29

Post by yoavm »

brenden2 wrote: post #12
CallMeMarc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting your own email service is way more difficult than just spinning up a smtp server and some interface. Most big providers (like gmail) are more likely to flag incoming mails from unknown servers. That's the reason why stuff like Sendy[1] is so popular. You host your own interface, settings and so on, but the ugly part of sending your email is handled by AWS SES. [1] https://sendy.co/

That's only true if you're spamming people a lot. Running your own postfix server is trivial, and you'll have a fine reputation so long as you aren't sending marketing BS.

Unfortunately, this is the total opposite of my experience. I've never sent any spam from my domains and yet Gmail refused constantly to let any of my emails through regardless of my VPS provider, my DKIM/SPF setup and so on. The _only_ way I could solve it is by letting my email be managed by some other email service provider (I went with Zoho but I don't think it matters).

Re: Show HN: A self-hosted email engine

#30

Post by greenie_beans »

sneak wrote: post #11
buboard wrote: post #4

This is not my area but why dont people setup their own smtp servers, and use plain tools like readcube?

Sadly, Google will flag as spam most new email servers by default. Email deliverability is a cartel these days.

yeah, came here to ask -- how do you not end up in the gmail spam folder?
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