Live data from Hacker News

Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

blitiri.com.ar

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Self hosted my email for over a decade and as long as you do the recommended SPF, DKIM and DMARC you have basically no problems. Occasionally I turn up in spam when I email someone I haven't before, but that's usually due to the .ro in my domain and the forced text mode rather than html. I've found problems only start occuring when you send transactional email. User signups, notifications, etc. Anything real…

> Occasionally I turn up in spam when I email someone I haven't before Just proved my point.

Last week I saw the same behavior sending email from my work's Google Workspace account to my personal Gmail account. The email stays within Google, I'm logged into both accounts on the same computer, does Google think I am I spamming myself...?

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#23
post #15

Does anyone know of an SMTP server which is easily usable with Caddy? I find tinkering with certificates quite bothersome, and I won't give up Caddy as I already host a bunch of apps with it.

You can just copy the caddy-generated certificates to the place the mail server expects them, if you're referring to the TLS side? This is what I do.

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#24
post #8

I'm amazed at how email server software is innovating and evolving like never before. We have new implementations of SMTP, IMAP, etc. We even have new protocols like JMAP thanks to the Fastmail guys. But it also feels like fewer and fewer people are running their own mail servers. Everyone seems to just outsource it to Google or Microsoft. I'm also surprised at how many engineers barely understand how email works. (I…

Email is in its own category in this regard, IMO.

I love to throw out a library and implement something myself so I gain a better understanding of what’s going on and maybe even improve on what was there before. But I can’t do that with email. Other servers are going to accept or reject my mail solely based on what my IP is, irrespective of how good my implementation is or is not. I’ve just never found it worth the time to dig into.

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#25
post #8

I'm amazed at how email server software is innovating and evolving like never before. We have new implementations of SMTP, IMAP, etc. We even have new protocols like JMAP thanks to the Fastmail guys. But it also feels like fewer and fewer people are running their own mail servers. Everyone seems to just outsource it to Google or Microsoft. I'm also surprised at how many engineers barely understand how email works. (I…

Quite frankly, it's just not worth the time or maintenance.

You'll eat your words once your only option is corpomail.

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#26
post #3

I'm a huge fan of Chasquid. The HAProxy protocol support makes it easy to integrate in Kubernetes. I uses to use this solution until a few months ago when I decided that self hosting my mail server was too much work. To be fair, it's not Chasquid's fault as operations there are basically 0, but more of a spam / email reputation thing.

Self-hosting email has been essentially dead for almost a decade. Even if you don't ever SPAM and send like one email a day on average, you won't be able to get them delivered to the recipient's inbox. You can use SPF, DKIM, DMARC all you want, google won't care.

Still running my own mail server, for myself and friends. No problems with deliverability thus far (including to Google) with SPF and DKIM set correctly.

The killer problem is often source address, and source address range, reputation. Mail sent from a normal residential ISP will have trouble. Addresses allocated by many VPS providers (and some dedicated server providers) will have spotty reputation. Mail from cheap VPS providers simply won't get through (many block SMTP outgoing and state so on sign-up because they don't want the support burden of people complaining about this). Sending mail from cloud providers can be an issue too (I've had mixed results with VMs in Azure sending out alerts).

If you are stuck with such a source reputation issue then you can use a service like MXRoute (several others are available, this one I've not used but it seems popular on a couple of hosting forums I frequent) as a relay. Obviously that is not free, but it is cheaper than moving to a much more expensive VPS provider or changing your home ISP.

Another reputation issue many have when setting up a new project is that many mail servers explicitly distrust new domains. In this case SPF, DKIM, and a good reputation source address won't make much difference. The definition of “new” varies from place to place but where it is an issue you need a domain registered at least some months ago. This can be mitigated somewhat by users explicitly marking messages from new domains as not spam, but that is not something you can rely upon as said users need to see the message to be able to mark it that way.

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#27

The hook functionality[1] looks easy to extend. I was looking for something that could trigger workflows for inbound email, anyone have (alternative) tool recommendations or experience? [1] https://blitiri.com.ar/p/chasquid/hooks/

Most delivery agents allow for piping incomming mail to a program - for filtrering or "delivery".

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#28
post #23
post #15

Does anyone know of an SMTP server which is easily usable with Caddy? I find tinkering with certificates quite bothersome, and I won't give up Caddy as I already host a bunch of apps with it.

You can just copy the caddy-generated certificates to the place the mail server expects them, if you're referring to the TLS side? This is what I do.

and https://maddy.email/ is built with a similar spirit

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#29
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-hosting email has been essentially dead for almost a decade. Even if you don't ever SPAM and send like one email a day on average, you won't be able to get them delivered to the recipient's inbox. You can use SPF, DKIM, DMARC all you want, google won't care.

Looking for help with Postfix configuration usually put you in forums threads with almost +10 years.

Choosing Postfix at this point in time is a mistake anyways though. Things like Stalwart or Haraka are just so much nicer to use.

Re: Chasquid – SMTP server focused on simplicity

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just copy the caddy-generated certificates to the place the mail server expects them, if you're referring to the TLS side? This is what I do.

and https://maddy.email/ is built with a similar spirit

Stalwart is probably more feature-complete than Maddy by now.
Post reply on HN