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Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

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Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#201

Post by mwexler »

codazoda wrote: post #193
tzs wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see something to make it easy to address the case where you are doing #1, but your provider does unilaterally kick you off with short notice for some reason. The email equivalent of a bug out bag [1]. This would be something that provides in a single package an SMTP server, an IMAP and POP server, pre-trained spam filtering, and maybe a web server with a web-based email client, and a simple setup program…

I use a domain, registered at Namecheap, and I forward to my gmail account. If gmail “goes away” I simply configure my email to forward elsewhere. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap forwarding, I point my DNS at another forwarding provider. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap, I transfer my domain to another provider. It gives me all the flexibility I need with almost no work or maintenance. There are enough mail providers that…

When you reply to emails, does google let you put your custom domain address as the sender so folks don't see the underlying gmail address?

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#204

Post by trillic »

mwexler wrote: post #201
codazoda wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a domain, registered at Namecheap, and I forward to my gmail account. If gmail “goes away” I simply configure my email to forward elsewhere. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap forwarding, I point my DNS at another forwarding provider. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap, I transfer my domain to another provider. It gives me all the flexibility I need with almost no work or maintenance. There are enough mail providers that…

When you reply to emails, does google let you put your custom domain address as the sender so folks don't see the underlying gmail address?

Yes.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#205

Post by pas »

mwexler wrote: post #201
codazoda wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a domain, registered at Namecheap, and I forward to my gmail account. If gmail “goes away” I simply configure my email to forward elsewhere. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap forwarding, I point my DNS at another forwarding provider. If I’m unhappy with Namecheap, I transfer my domain to another provider. It gives me all the flexibility I need with almost no work or maintenance. There are enough mail providers that…

When you reply to emails, does google let you put your custom domain address as the sender so folks don't see the underlying gmail address?

In fact Gmail requires you to add your SMTP if you want to send from a non-gmail address.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#206

Post by yyyk »

A lot of the comments are talking about people running their own personal email server. However, the post is more about arguing that organizations running their email infrastructure will become rare, and I'm not sure I agree with the author's thesis.

The challenges there are rather different. Spam is less of a problem: in B2B the correspondent is well-known and will be whitelisted quickly, while one can pay for extra spam filtering if needed. User experience isn't a biggie because frankly the biggest users aren't the ones paying. The real issue is TCO vs data independence - and in my limited experience I still see plenty of organization which still run Exchange (or equivalent) on their own domains.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#207

Post by [deleted] »

tzs wrote: post #185
pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

I'd like to see something to make it easy to address the case where you are doing #1, but your provider does unilaterally kick you off with short notice for some reason. The email equivalent of a bug out bag [1]. This would be something that provides in a single package an SMTP server, an IMAP and POP server, pre-trained spam filtering, and maybe a web server with a web-based email client, and a simple setup program…

[deleted]

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#208

Post by gorgoiler »

Last year I was forced to migrate my 90 year old neighbour to webmail. We initially chose Gmail but ended up with outlook.office.com due to horrible IT policies at the University where she is emeritus.

Walk through a computer interface with a 90 year old sometime. It is eye opening. Both webmail systems were utter design hell.

The list of stuff that tripped my friend up is long. Two examples: Gmail has pencils everywhere and at least two different styles to compose a message (chat style, big screen compose, reply style too I think.) Microsoft’s product has a typeahead for the To: field that ignores your contacts list and instead uses the institutional one, so typing “Anne” pulls up every Anne you’ve never heard of @youruni.com and not your friend Anne @gmail.com.

Gmail is also punitively fussy about receiving IPv6 mail but only on of its mail exchangers, so one in N mails get rejected. Great. Microsoft outlook requires you to scroll down each thread when opening it to see if “new message” meant the one at the top, or “new messages” plural further down.

You and I have become inured to this crap because we are comfortable solving problems with computers. For others, these products are very hard to use.

The one consistently brilliant client I use is the iOS mail app, via imap, to my personal mail host.

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#209

Post by blibble »

judge2020 wrote: post #175
dmw_ng wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sending your mail yourself is the real hard part It's possible to punt on this by using SES for outbound, while continuing to handle inbound a different way. Obviously SES doesn't count as fully self-hosted, but it does solve (or at least significantly ameliorate -- zero issues here) the reputation problem

I think that's what they're talking about in terms of 'you don't send your own mail', but it is a good solution and SPF+DKIM means you should have very few issues with deliverability and reputation.

spammers tend to set up SPF/DKIM

Re: Running your own email is increasingly an artisanal choice, not a practical one

#210

Post by [deleted] »

pyrale wrote: post #122

I would really say that "running your own email" is a set of things that can be done independently: - Getting your own domain and using a provider such as fastmail or proton is a first step that gives you lots of security fom arbitrary. Because you own the doorstep, you can change provider without having to inform all your contacts of the move. You're also more secure from unilateral moves from your provider. -Hostin…

[deleted]
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