Live data from Hacker News

Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

maddy.email

111–120 of 122 posts

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#111
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mail will go to Spam too with Maddy, this is not about the MTA.

This is not (always) true. Maddy comes with a lot of the 'good stuff' like DKIM and DMARC ready to be used, whereas setting that up yourself with Postfix was a pain (from my experience a few years ago) and probably meant you didn't bother. I've had better deliverability, especially to Gmail and Microsoft, since using Maddy, probably for this reason. Now, of course, I must admit that self-hosted e-mail seems like it w…

I dunno, I'm pretty shit when it comes to Unix systems and programming in general (spent 6 hours fighting a postcss and tailwind config file and lost) but I got dkim and dmarc set up on my own server for my own mail in maybe 30 minutes?

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#112
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got good results with Hetzner. But it takes some time to set up a server that complies with all of Google requirements. Also, I once inherited a spammy IP address and took me some time to remove it from spam databases.

What google requirements are you referring to? SPF/DKIM/etc?

Yes, basically that. I set up mail servers for a company in 2001-2008 and then it was way easier. I tried to do it again five years ago, for my personal server and quickly found the landscape changed a lot. But it is doable.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#113
It’s every couple of months that someone at my job comes along and says hey give me access to this data because my team is building their own marketing email tool. I always ask them who they know at google so that they can call and get unbanned from gmail. So far no one ever has an answer…email is tough and people need to be very careful when they try to do it at scale. That’s not to say that projects like this aren’t great. They are. But enterprise scale email is very complicated especially in regulated industries like finance and healthcare.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#114
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't run Maddy, but I do run email for an organization of a few thousand people. It happens on occasion from various providers, The larger organizations(MS,Google,etc) will spam your logs SMTP errors with a URL. You visit the URL and do whatever actions they want that particular day and life goes on. It's not hard, but it is a bit annoying sometimes. Generally if you have a static IP and you don't go being all stu…

So MS requires people with custom domains to run logging on their (possibly hosted and managed [by Google]) email server... and monitor it?

Not just MS, they pretty much all dump SMTP errors with URL's telling you about the SMTP error they gave you. Some are really awesome when you visit the URL, they say oh, do X and then you are good. Others say we just don't like you at the moment, with basically no detail... and then you get the full burden of figuring out why they didn't like you and trying again.

We host and manage the SMTP server(s) ourselves(We currently run Postfix). If you outsource your email to Google, etc, then they have to babysit the email logs for URL's, not you.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#115
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What google requirements are you referring to? SPF/DKIM/etc?

Yes, basically that. I set up mail servers for a company in 2001-2008 and then it was way easier. I tried to do it again five years ago, for my personal server and quickly found the landscape changed a lot. But it is doable.

Fair dos. I do run my own mailserver and although I have had problems I haven't found it impossible. The complexity in running a mailserver has for sure increased since 2008 but it hasn't seen the same level of complexity expansion that, for example, making a web site has.

I do use SPF but I don't use DKIM or DMARC. On the inbound side, I do use greylisting and anti-spam. I don't tend to change my config between releases of debian stable.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#116
post #44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some sort of web interface for self-hosted e-mail that is reasonably good and sleek/modern-looking like Gmail, and also works well on mobile with swipe gestures and everything?

I try and use native clients or TUIs rather than webmail. I'm current using Mail.app and aerc and having a blast.

Delta.chat looks similar to mail.app. Basically a WhatsApp UI for email. Open Source and E2EE.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#117
Yes running your own mail is still hard, and our approach is to manage and automate existing MTAs via an Open Source app: Lightmeter.io. Maddy looks great, and necessary. For people wanting to stick with Postfix, Lightmeter is worth a look. FYI we recently did the YC S21 interview but flunked the last hurdle this time around.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#118
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So MS requires people with custom domains to run logging on their (possibly hosted and managed [by Google]) email server... and monitor it?

Not just MS, they pretty much all dump SMTP errors with URL's telling you about the SMTP error they gave you. Some are really awesome when you visit the URL, they say oh, do X and then you are good. Others say we just don't like you at the moment, with basically no detail... and then you get the full burden of figuring out why they didn't like you and trying again. We host and manage the SMTP server(s) ourselves(We c…

But...are they, for my domain?

Do they care? How would I know? =(

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#119
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just MS, they pretty much all dump SMTP errors with URL's telling you about the SMTP error they gave you. Some are really awesome when you visit the URL, they say oh, do X and then you are good. Others say we just don't like you at the moment, with basically no detail... and then you get the full burden of figuring out why they didn't like you and trying again. We host and manage the SMTP server(s) ourselves(We c…

But...are they, for my domain? Do they care? How would I know? =(

Does your email get delivered? If it does, then they do monitor their logs.

Re: Maddy: Composable all-in-one mail server

#120
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone else with similar experience: I've been following all best practices to the best of my abilities (rDNS/DMARC/DKIM/SPF/etc). After all that was properly in place, the only problematic receiver was Microsoft (outlook.com/hotmail.com/live.com), which bounced and provided an appeal process. I filled the form, was requested documentation from my ISP on the IP address. I asked my VPS hosting company (since the…

Regarding the Microsoft issues, what form did you use? I tried one but they never got back to me..

The bounce mail sent to postmaster contained instructions to reply, which was followed by an automated reply with a link IIRC.

But like I mentioned, what eventually resolved it was the ISP contacting them.

Post reply on HN