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Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

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Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#201

Post by cloudsec9 »

johnklos wrote: post #179
thomastjeffery wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then pay a company to smarthost your outgoing mail through them. It's a few $ a month, and poof! Poof is right. There goes the primary reason people want to host on their own.

What's the primary reason people want to host on their own, in your opinion? I know of two primary reasons, and neither disappears because of smarthosting.

Not the poster, but I'd say that smarthosting hides visibility (when did this get delivered) and costs money.

I would argue that the overhead of setting things up is more pricey then paying for smarthost forwarding, but maybe I'm too practical,

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#202

Post by cloudsec9 »

FrontierPsych wrote: post #188
johnklos wrote: post #94

I run my own email. I have my own physical servers, that I built and tested myself, that I'm colocating. They handle both incoming and outgoing, and I've been doing it for so long that there is no previous reputation for the IP addresses I use. In spite of how vehemently some people, Reddit's /r/sysadmin, as an example, want you to NOT host your own and use issues like deliverability as reasons, it's really not hard…

I looked into hosting my own, but wow, so technical, at least to me. I don't know why there isn't some kind of pre-made install that you just click the "OK" and it downloads and installs the email servers. When I looked at it last, which was about 3 years ago, you had to install 5 or 6 or more different apps, get the interoperatbility going, setting different switches....it was endless. All I want to do is click an "…

If you make it too easy to set up, you make it ... too easy for spammers and other "marketing specialists" to start sending e-mail, I think is the reason.

Right now, they have to be technical (or at least pay $$ to tech people) to get that going, and it does slim down the numbers a little.

Getting the software lined up is the easy part, truth be told. It's the anti-spam/malware/anti-relay etc etc that is the challenge. And most big Email companies weigh how long you've been around, so you also have to be patient for your reputation to get high enough not to be in people's junk boxes all the time.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#203

Post by rodolphoarruda »

josephb wrote: post #186
rodolphoarruda wrote: post #134

I have decided not to. I prefer to support a small-tech company like Tutanota with a paid subscription to give bigtech's top line a millimetric nudge. Disclaimer: I'm a passionate Tutanota customer.

Are you using it with one of their domains or your own domain? How successful is delivery of the emails that you send out?

I'm using it with my own domain. So far, delivery is happening as expected. The domain was running under the Gmail umbrella for many years until Google's decision to charge for Workspaces. I tend to believe (until proven otherwise) that all those years running on G's infrastructure had a positive influence in how message routing from that particular domain is handled throughout the network.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#204

Post by gray_-_wolf »

gwbrooks wrote: post #55
gray_-_wolf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft's similar service Would someone remember the name? I've tried to search for microsoft's postmaster but did not find anything.

https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/

Ah, thank you.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#205

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

ziml77 wrote: post #26

I just use FastMail with a custom domain. What's especially nice is that it lets you generate aliases that use the fastmail.com domain. Great for signing up for sites where I don't want them to be able to identify me. This wouldn't work if I was hosting my own email since you'd be able to link all my identities by matching the domain.

yep, another super happy fastmail user here.

I'm not opposed to hosting my own email server, I'm just too lazy to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#206

Post by lukeck »

I recently switched to Fastmail and have been happy with it so far.

The setup I’m using is:

- I have a mylastname.com domain. For serious accounts like my bank and insurance, I use companyname@accounts.mylastname.com. - I also have a myrandomdomain.com. For most other online accounts I register with companyname@accounts.myrandomdomain.com. - I have been playing with a sieve script to automatically create folders and categorise incoming mail for each address. It needs a couple of small tweaks still that I didn’t quite iron out before going away for a few days but should be pretty straightforward. - In limited cases where I want more anonymity (eg. Facebook, Reddit, now Twitter), I create a masked email and set up a filter to put it into a folder myself. - I use a different address to log in to my account instead of myfirstname@mylastname.com

For me this is a reasonable mix of security and convenience. Depending on your level of paranoia you could be slightly less paranoid (company@yourdomain.com or company@something.yourdomain.com), or more paranoid (use masked emails for everything - there is now integration for this in 1password so if you’re using that for a password manager it’s very easy to manage. I love the automatic categorisation using my own generated addresses gives though.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#207

Post by zzo38computer »

I host my own email.

Incoming messages are sent directly to my SMTP server.

Outgoing messages are sent through the ISP's SMTP server. (This service is included with the internet service from the ISP, so I do not need to register for this service separately.)

The IP address rarely changes, but sometimes it does, and when it does change, I can update the DNS records.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#208

Post by timbit42 »

peatfreak wrote: post #138

Interesting to see so many folks here running Exim. It's my favorite MTA primarily because I find it understandable, it has excellent documentation, and I'm used to it as it used to be Debian's default MTA. I get a lot of folks telling me not to use it due its history of security issues, and recommending something else instead, like a qmail derivative. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

I feel similarly about Postfix. I'd like to hear from someone who has used both.

Re: Ask HN: Do You Host Your Own Email?

#209

Post by tqwhite »

kevincox wrote: post #161
tqwhite wrote: post #66

I do. For many years I have run a Mail in a Box server hosted on Digital Ocean. I like it very much and have had no problems. MIAB is a wonderful piece of scriptware. The guy promises to follow best practices in all things and, as best I can tell, he delivers. I have rarely had any problem with deliverability or anything else. I continue to do so for several reasons, hosting multiple domains, ad hoc addresses, etc, b…

I'm surprised you are having much success on Digital Ocean. I've found that their whole ASN is often marked as low reputation. For example sending to Microsoft or Apple has always been unreliable for me. It does seem that it can depend somewhat on what IP you roll. I guess if you get a good one and stick to it you may be able to scrape by with just the ASN reputation holding you back. Source: I run a service that sen…

For awhile I had trouble with Yahoo and a couple of others. I also had to get off a couple of spam lists. There was one big service that troubled me for years, can't remember which. But, the years went by and I guess my IP address got a better reputation.

I haven't had a deliverability problem in years. Maybe it's because I got better at the SPF's, DMARC's, etc.

I will say that I think it's an internet sin that these big companies make it hard for individuals to run their own servers. It seems like an attempt to make a corporate monopoly. My server has never been used for spam a single time. There is no reason I should not have been able to remedy problems instantly.

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