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Self-host your mail server

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Re: Self-host your mail server

#51

Post by UltraSane »

sandeepkd wrote: post #48
mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

I think the timeline is critical here and should be highlighted. Self hosting email server was something that worked out just fine in the past (used to host until 2014), however things have changed a lot with the scale of abuse. its not worth it unless you are doing it as a business. Sending a email from your home IP to big email providers with reliability is next to impossible. Even if we discount the spam managemen…

The importance of IP reputation is a reason for why email isn't using IPv6 much.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#52

Post by thunfischbrot »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

This seems to depend so much on the IP address space one is in. I have never experienced deliverability issues after the first year–and that's since the 2010s iirc. The first year I had to ask several friends to send me emails first, or dig out my email from spam and reply to it. After that it worked flawlessly for Gmail, which was hit-or-miss before. A single ISP I had to write to manually–the person responding to my mail explained that they blocked emails from my hoster's IP range wholesale but made an exception for my IP explicitly.

Never had any issues since then, though I did have to adjust to new standards such as DKIM, DMARC, SPF etc. over the years.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#53

Post by ktm5j »

Krei-se wrote: post #33
mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

you can check your delivery rate with services there are lots that are free to check and they also offer to "warm" your reputation. I have not done that yet (money!) and outside this: - Outlook.com consumer mail addresses you can still get >99% delivery rate if you have spf, dkim and all the new cool stuff. So no, please DO NOT recommend against doing it because ONLY if mail stays a decentralized service providers wi…

I used to run mail servers for a university and I also suggest that no one should do this. It's hard enough to get right when it's your full time job. No one wants that kind of headache just for an email address. Do what I do and pay for Proton and stick your domain on it.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#54

Post by UltraSane »

tripleee wrote: post #40
mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

I take a middle path. Self-host receiving mail, and use smtp2go.com for outgoing

How do this work? Do you need to use two different programs to send and read email?

Re: Self-host your mail server

#57

Post by arendtio »

mmh0000 wrote: post #16

I ran my own self-hosted email server from 2008-ish to 2018, and I would highly recommend against doing it! Especially when Fastmail and Proton are so cheap. I was running Postfix+Dovecot+Seive+SpamAssassin+Fail2ban+certbot+spf+dkim+reverse-ip+ It worked! Receiving email was overall pretty easy. I know I also did things the "hard way" by ad-hoccing all that together, and today there are a lot more out-of-the-box solu…

I have had my own e-mail server since 2017, and there is only one instance where I know I had a delivery problem, and in that case it was funny, because I wrote to two people who had the same e-mail server, and one got the e-mail the other did not. So probably a SPAM issue, but certainly nothing my e-mail server could have done better...

AFAIK, that case in 2019 was the only time an e-mail went missing.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#58

Post by bityard »

Even in the face of all the advice on reddit and HN that says never to host your own mail server, I have been doing so successfully for at least 15 years. It helps that I have had the same spam-free IP address for most of that time. All I ever do is run `apt upgrade` approximately once a week. Costs all of $5 a month and there's just enough RAM leftover that I can also use it for wireguard tunnels or whatever if I need to.

I have decided that if my VPS provider shuts down, I can just send my outgoing mail through a cloud provider's SMTP gateway. My volume is low enough that it will be free or cost a few cents a month.

Deliverability is not a problem for me, but incoming spam does not have a great solution. Even with rspamd, a lot of crap gets through if you start spamming your email address everywhere. This is why I use a lot of throwaway and company-specific email address.

If you only have one email address, yeah Fastmail or whatever is cheap. But as soon as you want multiple users (family) and throwaway email addresses, it gets expensive in a hurry. But those are free if you self-host.

Re: Self-host your mail server

#60

Post by greengreengrass »

I’ve self-hosted for 21 years.

I also run mail servers for others, mostly non-profit adjacent groups who don’t have the capital to be extorted by cloud service providers.

Sure, there are some things to learn, but like anything – if you do it properly, it’s not hard and can work properly. Never had any deliverability issues over that time (yes, even to the big providers). I also almost never touch the boxes (I do about one architectural overhaul a decade and am working on the next right now).

If you’re willing to invest the time and resources to do it properly, I agree, it works fine.

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