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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

#231

Post by im_down_w_otp »

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…

FWIW, someone is still reading your email. The owner of the infrastructure of your message recipients. If you've gone through the trouble of hosting your own email to avoid Google harvesting your messages, but you're exchanging emails with someone whose email is hosted by Google, then your emails are still being harvested and/or are harvestable.

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

#232

Post by leephillips »

chmaynard wrote: post #215
leephillips wrote: post #129

The article makes a string of assertions without evidence. For example, that an “artisinal” email server will not “measure up in usability, features, and performance to the email infrastructure that is run by big providers.” One reason that I continue to run my own email server after more than a decade of trouble-free operation (thanks Postfix and Dovecot) is that it performs better than my Gmail account, which I mai…

> The article makes a string of assertions without evidence. Agreed, but the same observation could be made about most blog posts. The author is expressing his opinions based on experience and judgment. This particular author has a good reputation so HN readers take his opinions seriously.

Fair enough. But in this case his opinions are incorrect and arbitrary.

The reason I and many others maintain our own email servers is not to be “cute” (a word used in the article) but because we want superior usability, features, and performance over what the major providers can offer. Otherwise, why would I bother? The only issue is that some people claim to experience delivery problems. Others, such as myself, say that delivery is at least as good as from major providers.

And receipt is far better than when using a big provider. Unlike the unfortunate users of hotmail, I actually get all my email.

EDIT: And not only does (for example) Gmail run a poorly performing email service, but their web client for interacting with email is broken: https://lwn.net/Articles/837960/

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

#233

Post by upofadown »

upofadown wrote: post #4

Wait, is email spam still a thing? I only get a few spam a day and Spamassassin easily identifies them. I had assumed that the spammers had moved off to other mediums. Either that or they are specifically targeting big servers like Gmail and are leaving the smaller servers, with their varied (artisanal) anti-spam approaches alone.

Replying to myself...

Another reason could be that I live in a country with very strict anti-spam and privacy laws (Canada). I have always assumed that spammers wouldn't care but who knows...

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

#234

Post by the_angry_angel »

caymanjim wrote: post #107
rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

I hear this all the time, but I question how true it is. I've been running my own mail servers for decades, and I've never had any problems with sending or receiving mail. I suspect anyone who properly configures their server will be fine.

> I hear this all the time, but I question how true it is. I've been running my own mail servers for decades, and I've never had any problems with sending or receiving mail. I suspect anyone who properly configures their server will be fine.

At work I ran email servers professionally and with good deliverability for years. My own email server was arguably longer lived than those at work, just much lower volumes. IP block was clean, DKIM, SPF, rDNS, etc. all setup correctly.

I thought I had no deliverability issues. I interacted with mailing lists regularly, the odd email to friends and family and I was firmly in your camp until I had to deal with a death in the family.

I think this was shortly after Microsoft BPOS became Office365. It became very very clear very very rapidly that to certain orgs I just wasn't hitting the inbox. And there was jack shit I could do about it. That was the end of my mail server, and it's certainly got worse over time.

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

#235

Post by baobabKoodaa »

throwaway27727 wrote: post #198
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you put some decent effort [...] it works Well, I put in more than some decent effort, and I didn't get it "to work". I detailed my efforts here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-ser... Please stop spreading falsehoods. If you were able to somehow get your own email server to deliver email to Gmail and Outlook, great, good for you - but stop pretending that anybody can do it.

Lots of sister comments here saying that they've been running a mail server for X amount of years, where X is a rather large number. That will obviously come with some reputation for your mail server, reducing the curve of being classified as down. I would be interested in hearing from someone who tried to setup a new mail server in the last 1-2 years who was able to run it without a hitch.

According to AWS, most mail servers will not even count statistics for low-volume senders. If that is true, then it won't matter whether your personal email server has been up for 20 years or 1 year, it won't have any reputation.

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

#236

Post by pid-1 »

stiray wrote: post #230
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…

Internet was meant to be decentralized. Lets leave it this way. I am running my server for 15 years and couldn't be more happy with "artisan" infrastructure. I don't want or use webmail (sluggish), I don't want others fingerpoking my emails, I don't want various compulsory registration systems (like requiring my phone number out of """security""" reasons like google), giving others the ability to kill my account and…

> Getting spam? I am sick of you, whatever? No issue, just REJECT the whole address

I started using that with Fast mail, they call that Masked address. Best spam filter ever.

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

#237

Post by kaetemi »

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…

But what if... the TLD owner decides to 10x the domain price?

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

#238

Post by zbuf »

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…

Does gmail actually trust the incoming forwarded email? Or mark a lot of it as spam.

My understanding is that SPF makes forwarding like this no longer possible if the original sender's address is to be preserved.

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

#239

Post by floren »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #214
mysterydip wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating part is someone who isn't getting your mail will blame it on you. "I get everyone else's (gmail/outlook) email, it must be you."

Hmm, guess it's time for a counter-attack : "Sorry, but it's too much hassle to send e-mail to gmail/outlook, please use another provider if you want to communicate." ?

I post on a mailing list where one member has configured his server to reject all emails from Gmail. Inevitably we end up getting messages sent to the list which begin, "Direct emails to are being rejected, so I'm sending it via the list, sorry for the noise!"

The unspoken "you silly prick" gets louder every time this happens.

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

#240

Post by zbuf »

hannob wrote: post #70
rmdes wrote: post #6

Someone should try "artisanal email server" using cloudron or yunohost ! the bigger problem is that "authoritative" email monopolies such as Gmail, 365 and the other big ones arbitrarily define and impose what is a legit email server or not and even with better score than gmail an "artisanal" email server can suffer from being classified into spam by the big tech players just because they can and will do anything to…

I'm running an email server and I can tell you that this is by and large not the case. If you put some decent effort into making sure that you don't send spam, try to monitor if anyone thinks you send spam and react when someone complains that you send spam (and stop it), it works. In my experience people telling these stories often do send spam, but they don't believe they do. ("It's not spam, it's a Newsletter. No,…

I think the vastly different experiences have a lot to do with the quality and scale of the ISP. Best results with small, good quality ISPs.

Also running my own servers for personal and business, and working well.

But when we tried to use one of the large VM providers the experience was much less reliable. Despite ensuring the IP was not on the various block lists etc. mails would be accepted and silently discarded by recipients ISPs, perhaps due to the level of abuse of these IP ranges.

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