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After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

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Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#511

Post by tjbiddle »

> Email is now an oligopoly, a service gate kept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality.

While I understand what they're getting at here, I disagree. There are certainly other providers you can go with - You just need to pay up.

Happy customer of FastMail here. All of my personal domains, and multiples businesses are tied to it. Wonderful service, no deliverability issues, great features, etc.

So - clearly other companies are able to get it right. Self-hosting is probably difficult, but it's not like you're forced to go to Big Tech.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#512

Post by RockingGoodNite »

redeeman wrote: post #430
Joeboy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the issue wasn't that I had to fix it frequently , but that when I did it was urgent, stressful and disruptive. Eventually the VDS I was renting had a fatal HD crash and I gave up.

this would apply to any self hosted stuff you rely on, but yeah, self hosting is not for everyone

Agreed. Salient.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#513

Post by stephen_g »

tjbiddle wrote: post #511

> Email is now an oligopoly, a service gate kept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality. While I understand what they're getting at here, I disagree. There are certainly other providers you can go with - You just need to pay up. Happy customer of FastMail here. All of my personal domains, and multiples businesses are tied to it. Wonderful service, no deliverability issues, great…

Yeah, this is my compromise too. I'm not able to spend the effort setting up my own mail server right now, but don't want to just use one of the really big players, so I use my own domain and FastMail. Feels good to support a smaller player.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#514

Post by RockingGoodNite »

WretchedEarl wrote: post #145
jasode wrote: post #21

The sweet spot for having control over your email while simultaneously minimizing unforseen headaches is to simply own your domain name and point the MX record to whatever hosting provider you want instead of self-hosting a server at home. Same philosophy for exposing a your personal blog of html files or content like mp4 videos. The sweet spot is to focus on buying a domain name you control. Then let Amazon S3, or C…

> simply own your domain name and point the MX record to whatever hosting provider you want That's not necessarily a sure cure, depending on the hosting provider. RoadRunner (Spectrum / Charter) in the US and Shaw in Canada won't deliver emails from my domain hosted at Runbox.com (or sent directly from the runbox.com domain.) Spectrum's bounce message references an error code that translates to "Spectrum limits the n…

Some of us use Wireguard or OpenVPN to host where we want and use a static cheap or free (like Cloudflare) public point of presence IP.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#515

Post by Godel_unicode »

jimmydorry wrote: post #428
PinguTS wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completly agree with you. While Hetzner is my actual neighbor as their headquarters is right in the neighboring town, I still use a server at very small scale provider. I have no problem with my email server. I receive some spam here and there, mostly from Russia. But I immediatly block the according IP addresses for some time. For years I avoided to use any external service to decide whether its Spam or not. But a…

If you are using external blocklists, you are perpetuating the problem here. Small mail operators end up on blocklists through no fault of their own, and it sounds like your server would reject them just like the big servers do.

This is pure victim-blaming. The problem is that bulletproof hosting exists, not that people are sick of spam.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#516

Post by jimmydorry »

koheripbal wrote: post #471
jimmydorry wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using external blocklists, you are perpetuating the problem here. Small mail operators end up on blocklists through no fault of their own, and it sounds like your server would reject them just like the big servers do.

Not using block lists will inundate mail servers with spam. It's a necessary evil.

And for most people, using a large mail provider is the necessary evil. I don't see much difference between a small mail provider using block lists and a large mail provider using the same block lists + their own proprietary lists and metrics.

Both result in other small mail providers getting blocked for arbitrary reasons with limited recourse.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#517

Post by RockingGoodNite »

MichaelVangard wrote: post #355
nullc wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sweet spot for having no forth amendment protection for your email because its stored by a third party.

Most emails are still going through servers owned by Microsoft or Google, so what does self-hosting email accomplish in reality? Some government entity likely has warrant-less access to most of your emails regardless. I like email as a way to communicate, but speaking pragmatically, it’s just not a secure means of communication in 2022.

My server uses encrypted connections and my own certificate. If I send an email to a family member on my server, no one on the Internet can read its contents. If I add a recipient and FAANG or Microsoft then yes it wouldn't matter. If that is truly important, we can learn to encrypt emails locally first.

What does self-hosting accomplish? I'd say it's important in the way that having HAM radio operators is important.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#518

Post by jimmydorry »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #515
jimmydorry wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using external blocklists, you are perpetuating the problem here. Small mail operators end up on blocklists through no fault of their own, and it sounds like your server would reject them just like the big servers do.

This is pure victim-blaming. The problem is that bulletproof hosting exists, not that people are sick of spam.

I don't follow. I am pointing out that using the same kinds of lists that the big providers use will result in smaller providers being arbitrarily blocked with little recourse. Do you disagree with that assessment?

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#519

Post by mrb »

«So, starting today, the MX records of my personal domain no longer point to the IP of my personal server. They now point to one of the Big Email Providers.»

I would have kept the MX records pointing to my personal server, and I would have changed only my configuration to send outgoing email through a third-party relay (eg. Gandi). This would have solved all the author's problems (deliverability issues) while staying 99% self-hosted.

Re: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel

#520

Post by jimmydorry »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #470
jimmydorry wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are using external blocklists, you are perpetuating the problem here. Small mail operators end up on blocklists through no fault of their own, and it sounds like your server would reject them just like the big servers do.

You don’t have to use blocklists to block messages. I use blocklists in my self-hosted setup but only for the purpose of adding header fields that my Bayesian anti-spam filter can use to classify messages. I don’t reject anything out-right, aside from attempted spoofs of the domains my server is authoritative for. Everything is received— it just may end up in an “Unsure” folder if it seems too shady for the filter to…

That sounds like a better solution and not at all what I would assume someone means when they say that they use blocklists to filter out spam.
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