Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

I tried out FastMail and ended up deciding to self-host because they would block legitimate email even though I added a contact as instructed to "whitelist" senders. Their support just said that the sender wasn't set up "correctly". They weren't necessary wrong but I don't care as a user, I want that email.

So I enjoy the fact that my self-hosted solution only rejects emails from blocked senders or DMARC rejects. At the very least everything else goes to spam so that I can see it.

I've been running a server since 2005, as a teen. It's been easy. It's my main email.

In 2019 I migrated from the vServer to a dedicated setup switching from Debian to OpenBSD, from Postfix to OpenSMTPD. I use Dovecot, the only thing I ever tinkered with were spamd or spamassassin. The only things to do were DKIM, DMARC and SPF.

I have never had an issue with mails not arriving on either end, I rely on it personally and professionally.

I am very much not an expert in the area, nor really interested. I just set it up and it works. Should some emergency thing happen I'll just put on my last backup. But no data loss has ever occurred in these years. Just use your RAID setup.

So far it has been more reliable than Gmail (which was down, had bugs, etc., just search Hacker News ;))

I think there is a huge amount of FUD in the area. E-Mail itself is very reliable and handles any issues very well. Since it's a super old tech nothing much changes, just DKIM and so on. I think a lot of tech people are all to used to hosting stuff that constantly changes which makes them very scared of it. But e-mail you just read into, set it up, add a couple of comments for your future self and might easily outlive you.

Of course you should do your updates and of course I wouldn't recommend to do it like me and do that as a whim as a teenager with no experience, but also it worked out.

I'd recommend OpenBSD because the system is sane, you get OpenSMTPD which is compared to other extremely easy to set up correctly. It doesn't have all the cruft that others accumulated.

Here some things that you need to not forget so others won't think you are a spammer:

* Set up (and test) SPF

* Set up (and test) DKIM

* Set up (and test) DMARC - even if it's just the record part

DON'T FORGET TO SET UP the PTR record. I do that for all systems, but somehow even with people that should know this things from their job people seem not to.

Read up on each of these things to get it once, configure it properly, add comments, maybe write down some notes somewhere, have backups. And you are good to go.

If you are scared, you can just do all of the above and still use what you currently use. Spend some times (years?) to see if it works for you with non-important stuff. If it does, you can switch stuff over. If not you learned something.

This is not me saying that I think you should do it, but it's an option if you are interested. You can just get a cheap server and try it. In the very worst case you'll have learned something and made your own opinion.

Also on IP reputation. I think there's something off here.

You go to say Mailchimp/Mandrill/Mailgun/etc., because of their "reputation" and a month later you notice that their reputation sucks, so what happens is they upsell you to get your dedicated IP (own thing, more expensive package, etc.).

I never had a problem with IP reputation but I'd assume that your hosting company would give you a new one if you brought it up.

I do! tinydns and dnscache all the way (although considering alternatives that aren't BIND[1]); only problem I've had was the auto-SOA generation which the .is people didn't like (they want each NS to have the same SOA) but since I generate the data file with a script anyway, it was an easy tweak to make that SOA a known value.

[1] Historical issues with running at an ISP in the late 90s and the various security issues since.

I've had a VPS running the free version of Axigen server for I don't even know how long. 10 years?

The first year was rough because I didn't know what I was doing. Mail would not go to or from certain domains with no indication of why.

Once I finally figured out all the security settings, it's fine. My domain will talk to anyone (including Google) and has been for several years.

My private email is my primary account. It's on a domain with my name, so I use it everywhere.

Is it worth it? Absolutely not. I wouldn't recommend you run your own server unless you just want the experience. It's far, far easier and cheaper to just buy the domain name and use the inbox your registrar offers. Or a paid service to host email under your custom domain.

For me, I have other users on this service, and the cost and risk of migrating them to a new service is way, way too much. I'd have to decrypt their inboxes and merge them into the new service, and I just don't want to go there, so I keep this server ticking over until we all die I guess

> Also on IP reputation. I think there's something off here.

IP-reputation is largely a thing of the past.

IP addresses are ephemeral and email providers understand that. Especially with IPv6, where an individual can have access to tens of thousands of addresses. So, all large email service providers have spam filters based on content, and domain reputation, not IP reputation. Misbehaving hosts may be periodically blocked based on IP, but this is never permanent. Otherwise email providers would be blocking the entire IPv4 internet by now.

If you have a domain that does not spam, and it is using DMARC + DKIM, then there is sufficient proof that an email sent on behalf of the domain is authentic and the email will be accepted no problem.

The only real problem with hosting your own email, is that it is usually impossible to host it from your residential internet connection, as ISPs do not allow you to 'own' your IP-address, by not allowing you to create PTR records. This is all on purpose though, ISPs block it and email providers require it. It's is because there are just so many residential IP addresses that are part of a botnet sending spam.