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How to run your own mail server (2017)

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Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#51

Post by colonwqbang »

wpietri wrote: post #30
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

Agreed! I've been running my own mail server for 20+ years, and I would not recommend that anybody do this on a lark. Deliverability to GMail is a huge problem for me and has been for years. I even asked friends at Google to find out what the story was. All I got back is that the mail group was so careful/paranoid it wouldn't talk to them either. I would long ago have switched over to a vendor, but I use qmail-style…

I don't see why sub-addresses would be a problem with regards to sending mail. Isn't it wholly up to the receiver to interpret the username part of the address (or not)?

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#52

Post by syntheticnature »

rhizome wrote: post #46
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

This criticism came up last time too, and I replied that I've been running my own mail server for 20 years off of a DSL line, and I have no trouble sending to anybody (that I've heard of from recipients nor MAILER-DAEMON). I have DKIM, SPF and no relaying and the only issue in recent memory was when AT&T started bouncing me for some reason. I emailed postmaster@ saying "hey wats up," and the block was removed a day o…

Do you know that your messages arrive in all cases? Not merely fail to bounce, but arrive?

I help with IT for a small non-profit membership org, and the problem isn't the places that throw errors when you send, but the ones that silently accept the message without complaint and route it to /dev/null. We get through fine to Google, but the other big providers are random at best about it.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#53

Post by big_chungus »

mgalgs wrote: post #40
wpietri wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed! I've been running my own mail server for 20+ years, and I would not recommend that anybody do this on a lark. Deliverability to GMail is a huge problem for me and has been for years. I even asked friends at Google to find out what the story was. All I got back is that the mail group was so careful/paranoid it wouldn't talk to them either. I would long ago have switched over to a vendor, but I use qmail-style…

Curious why you're so attached to the qmail style subaddressing. Personal preference or is there a technical advantage?

Possibly not getting blocked. Many sign-up fields will block foo+spam@bar.net if I try to use it.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#54

Post by BenjiWiebe »

wpietri wrote: post #30
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

Agreed! I've been running my own mail server for 20+ years, and I would not recommend that anybody do this on a lark. Deliverability to GMail is a huge problem for me and has been for years. I even asked friends at Google to find out what the story was. All I got back is that the mail group was so careful/paranoid it wouldn't talk to them either. I would long ago have switched over to a vendor, but I use qmail-style…

Funny. I'm somewhat new to the game but my email server has had very few problems delivering anywhere (hosting a small business' email, and personal email for the employees.) I've got spf, dkim, and dmarc. I use tls on everything. Got a static ip (linode) with rdns. I've never had a problem delivering to gmail. For a while i had problems delivering to Hotmail/outlook, but participating in some sort of junk mail reporting program (JMRP i think it was) fixed that issue. Now, if i have deliverability problems, it's cause something broke, or my tls cert expired, or i added a new ip that the email server decided to start using. (Sorry for formatting, on mobile)

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#55

Post by daffy »

benbristow wrote: post #3

Alternatively pay for a GSuite account for like £3 a month (Or Office 365) and all of this is handled for you with superior spam filtering, search, webmail, no manual administration and no issues with email delivery due to other filters thinking your server is a bit dodgy. It's too much effort to run your own email server well.

posteo.de is 1 euro/month

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#56

Post by cosmojg »

starbugs wrote: post #32
Naac wrote: post #15

A ( somewhat ) happy medium between hosting your own email ( and dealing with getting IP blocked ) and fully entrusting youtself to Google is to use webmail as provided by your domain name registrar. For example, gandi.net provides web mail on your own domain. Even, better, it has support for wildcard email just like google does.

gandi.net doesn't support external domains. I'd be thankful for any recommendations that aren't totally overpriced and allow for external domains.

Personally, I use Migadu[1] for sending and receiving mail with my own domain. I've yet to find anything that provides more bang for my buck.

[1] https://www.migadu.com/en/index.html

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#57

Post by darkpicnic »

wpietri wrote: post #30
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

Agreed! I've been running my own mail server for 20+ years, and I would not recommend that anybody do this on a lark. Deliverability to GMail is a huge problem for me and has been for years. I even asked friends at Google to find out what the story was. All I got back is that the mail group was so careful/paranoid it wouldn't talk to them either. I would long ago have switched over to a vendor, but I use qmail-style…

Fastmail allows this, if I’m understanding your need correctly. I’ve been using it for years.

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#58

Post by AWildC182 »

mlrotter wrote: post #27

I feel like if people are gonna take back email this process needs to be easier; like a single application with a web front-end. Hosting email is a pain! This is why everyone seems to outsource their email hosting. Read the comments in the 2017 discussion. Favorite quote: "I run my own mail infrastructure. To say the least I wouldn't recommend it even to my worst enemies. It's horrible." https://news.ycombinator.com/…

If that's what you want, look at fastmail or protonmail...

Re: How to run your own mail server (2017)

#59

Post by jstimpfle »

curiousfab wrote: post #28
dpcan wrote: post #22

Then you realize the true pain of having a near-zero reputation when trying to email anything to people on Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc, etc. Expect to go to spam even if you have DKIM, SPF, and no relaying. If anyone actually knows the secret to not having your own mail-server's mail go to spam on these bigger systems, please tell, I've Googled it for years with no success.

For some reason I never had problems, even after a recent change of my IP address because I moved to a new VPS. Hetzner VPS, proper reverse DNS, SPF, that's all, not even DKIM. The only big ISP that doesn't like my mails is AT&T and I couldn't care less (in Europe, rarely have to deal with people @att.net).

I just do reverse DNS on a cheap VPS. I believe I don't even have encryption. Almost no problems since I switched to that setup 9 years ago. Some mails to Gmail end up in spam, and just yesterday I had my first "refused due to poor reputation" problem due to an unknown problem with Cloudmark. Have been able to reset my score there by filling an HTML form.

Of course, there are some mails where I don't know if they landed in spam or I just didn't get a reply.

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