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Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

poste.io

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Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#171

Post by humpydumpy »

pbreit wrote: post #130
that_courtney wrote: post #13

I feel like this solution is optimizing the wrong problem. The bulk of work with managing a mail server (these days) isn't software setup and admin. On the receiving side, it's all the work dealing with abuse and attacks. On the sending side -- and this is the tough one -- it's getting sites to accept your email. When I finally gave up managing my own mail server (about two years ago), I found that about every six mo…

Why are the email providers so bad about this? When I check my "spam" filder in Gmail, around half the email is not spam. Is it because humans are so bad at classifying spam?

google has one of the worst spam filters. It can be done much better, and google could do it much better. But I suppose they are just big enough now. Can't reach your contacts that use google? Well, just sign up to google as well, then you can reach them. People like you are the reason google can behave like that.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#172

Post by AnonC »

throwaway892238 wrote: post #121

> All passwords are by default stored as salted SHA512 hash (5000 rounds). Attackers will have hard time to crack your passwords. Tell me you don't know about password security without telling me you don't know about password security > SMTP - port 25, 465 (TLS), 587 Tell me you don't follow RFCs without telling me you don't follow RFCs > https://poste.io/doc/license you are allowed to run unlimited count of instance…

I'm not the OP/creator and have no affiliation with it. On the first two points, I thought the snark in this comment could be accepted had it been followed with more useful information and pointers along with the criticism. A one line criticism and attack isn't helping anyone and doesn't help us have "curious conversation" that HN asks users to promote.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#173

Post by KyeRussell »

foxylad wrote: post #116
that_courtney wrote: post #13

I feel like this solution is optimizing the wrong problem. The bulk of work with managing a mail server (these days) isn't software setup and admin. On the receiving side, it's all the work dealing with abuse and attacks. On the sending side -- and this is the tough one -- it's getting sites to accept your email. When I finally gave up managing my own mail server (about two years ago), I found that about every six mo…

THIS. Spam is a solved problem, thanks to SPF and DKIM. But despite doing all the right things, Microsoft and Google continuously block and rate-limit delivery. Case in point: we deliver 20,000 booking confirmation emails every day, all requested by users and not spam. We have perfect Postmaster Tools metrics: absolutely zero reported spam, 100% IP reputation, high domain reputation, zero feedback loop spam, 100% enc…

Impersonation is “””solved””” by SPF and DKIM, not spam.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#174

Post by KyeRussell »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #125
brightball wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many servers do you have? Just curious if the rate limit is per IP address?

We have a Microsoft email subscription (all our mail is hosted with them), and their smtp server rate limits how much mail we send to our customers. We can’t even send 30 emails at once. We had to implement retry logic with back off.

You should be using a dedicated transactional email provider, and accept the additional cost. At most scales, this is the correct business decision.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#175

Post by kuon »

Many people are saying it is hard to run a mail server, but I never had any deliverability issue with mine.

The most important (well hard because I needed ISP collaboration) step was to get a reverse DNS for the IP.

I am sending emails from a few domains, so not too much. And my volume is low (10 per day).

I run openbsd and I mostly followed that guide https://prefetch.eu/blog/2020/email-server/

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#176

Post by Jansemon »

that_courtney wrote: post #13

I feel like this solution is optimizing the wrong problem. The bulk of work with managing a mail server (these days) isn't software setup and admin. On the receiving side, it's all the work dealing with abuse and attacks. On the sending side -- and this is the tough one -- it's getting sites to accept your email. When I finally gave up managing my own mail server (about two years ago), I found that about every six mo…

I am always reading and never experiencing this (knockonwood).

I'm self hosting email servers for multiple domains for now nearly 25 years. When moving to a new hoster with new IP addresses (especially Hetzner, as it is cheaper and seems to attract more malicious people), I have to contact Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and one or two other big providers to clear my IP address range. This has to be done only once and usually is resolved within hours (faster for automated sites). The bigger ones have a web page to do this, others can be reached via email and are always replying quite quickly. So after a day, everything works and once it works, this never changes and mail gets accepted.

These servers are being used by multiple users and businesses and none have reported any problems. For decades.

I am only using dedicated servers though and using everything in the book: DNSSEC, DMARC, SPF, DKIM, proper DNS records, TLS with valid certs and a correctly behaving SMTP server...

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#178

Post by amir734jj »

zacharyvoase wrote: post #51

> All passwords are by default stored as salted SHA512 hash (5000 rounds). Attackers will have hard time to crack your passwords. SHA512 isn't a good choice for this, because it's optimized for fast low-memory computation. Why not use bcrypt or argon2, which are industry-accepted best practices for password hashing?

You are basically saying sha256 is prune to attack. As long as they salt the password, it should be fine.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#179

Post by fuzzy2 »

ascar wrote: post #56
roywashere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hosted my own mail for some time and got into trouble with the school of my kids because they did not receive my reply to their mail. I self hosted because I wanted to prefer not to be part of the huge o365/Gmail/iCloud monocultures. Last year I moved my mail to an old fashioned shared webhosting account at Hetzner. Very happy with it!

> Last year I moved my mail to an old fashioned shared webhosting account at Hetzner. Very happy with it! How exactly is that solving the problem? If anyone does something remotely spammy from that ip, your mails are spam again too. And you probably got lucky that the ip you're sitting on was warm and trusted to begin with. You didn't really find a solution, the problem simply hasn't occurred yet for you or you are n…

I think you misunderstand. You cannot have a mail service on shared webhosting. It’s like 1999: Upload PHP using FTP, the end.

Instead, the hosting provider will operate a mail service for you, much like Microsoft 365, G Suite and the like. They will also take care of the IP reputation, SPF, DKIM and all.

Re: Poste.io – Complete Mail Server

#180

Post by mjl- »

that_courtney wrote: post #13

I feel like this solution is optimizing the wrong problem. The bulk of work with managing a mail server (these days) isn't software setup and admin. On the receiving side, it's all the work dealing with abuse and attacks. On the sending side -- and this is the tough one -- it's getting sites to accept your email. When I finally gave up managing my own mail server (about two years ago), I found that about every six mo…

Not my experience. I have run a personal mail server for about 15 years. My mail has almost always been delivered just fine. The network my mail server IP has been in a blocklist less than handful times, but this has always been temporary and resolved without my intervention (perhaps my hosting provider is on top of this).

On the other hand, I'm also sending email for a client through AWS SES, and those emails are regularly blocked due to their IPs being on a blocklist. And indeed I also get spam delivered through AWS SES. I understand that it is a cat & mouse game for mail service providers to prevent spam being sent through their services. My point: switching to cloud providers doesn't magically solve your mail problems.

Aonther issue with large mail account providers (gmail at least), is that they will accept & deliver your message, but just "deliver" it to the spam folder. It's so annoying if mail is accepted but you don't know if it is actually seen by the recipient. This erodes trust in email. I understand mail servers don't want to tell spammers whether their email is accepted/rejected, but I would prefer a few more spams in my inbox if I at least won't miss emails.

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