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Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

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Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#61

Post by trilogic »

comrade1234 wrote: post #50
trilogic wrote: post #47

The thing about selfhosting email is that, Even after getting rated 10/10 in every mailchecker service and after a nearly 1 year service, Gmail still marks it as spam. So Gmail is basically the monopoly that undermines small startup business by marking their Email service as spam. But ofc this will happen because Europe allows it, making Europe lawmakers an inferior entity even to a private company.

Is it from sending mass emails that look like spamming? I've never had a problem sending to Gmail but my personal server is only used by me and a few others for personal email.

We communicate via email exclusively with our already users and clients which in 99% of the cases contact us first (from same gmail address that mark our service as a spam), we don't have time to spam which anyway will damage our reputation. The funny thing is that, All this happens mostly with traffic in our own continent in our own country (we are not even trying to get intercontinental clients)!

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#62

Post by general1465 »

simonjgreen wrote: post #10

I am in favour of the middle ground. Rather than expending effort self hosting email, which while plausible is unequivocally a heavy lift for most, make use of smaller providers such as Fastmail or Protonmail. Just please stop consolidating the internet.

I am also going with Protonmail, not because I can't setup my own server, but because I don't want to take care for yet another server, whose loss (be it by hacking or by my mistake) would be catastrophic for my whole digital life. I will rather pay to somebody else who know what they are doing.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#63

Post by jauntywundrkind »

tsukikage wrote: post #15
graemep wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can usually switch host. Some have better IP reputations than others. There are quite a few other providers of email forwarding services, although I might look at SES myself if its that cheap as I have issues with hotmail (I seem to be OK with most mail to email on MS hosted email on other domains, oddly enough).

> You can usually switch host ...it took OP 8 months of "rolling the gacha" and waiting to get a clean IP; no mention of costs. Not really a solution in my book. If you're willing to wait 8 months for working email, I put it to you you're actually using some other provider for your life and the thing you are playing with is a toy. I've been self-hosting my email for a pretty long time. I first started down the reputa…

> ..it took OP 8 months of "rolling the gacha" and waiting to get a clean IP; no mention of costs.

I dont see anything about it taking the OP 8 months to get a clean IP? They were on Hetzner, and can presumably keep making new VM's for a while until they get a clean one. Hetzner bills based on hours used, so I imagine that total cost would be quite low.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#64

Post by tsukikage »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #63
tsukikage wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can usually switch host ...it took OP 8 months of "rolling the gacha" and waiting to get a clean IP; no mention of costs. Not really a solution in my book. If you're willing to wait 8 months for working email, I put it to you you're actually using some other provider for your life and the thing you are playing with is a toy. I've been self-hosting my email for a pretty long time. I first started down the reputa…

> ..it took OP 8 months of "rolling the gacha" and waiting to get a clean IP; no mention of costs. I dont see anything about it taking the OP 8 months to get a clean IP? They were on Hetzner, and can presumably keep making new VM's for a while until they get a clean one. Hetzner bills based on hours used, so I imagine that total cost would be quite low.

> I dont see anything about it taking the OP 8 months to get a clean IP?

Here you go: https://mastodon.social/@whitequark/115298148901108415

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#65

Post by [deleted] »

bravetraveler wrote: post #29
e12e wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Microsoft 365 however apparently will hate your email no matter what. you learn to live with it > Or you don’t self-host but use a major email provider and don’t have the problem. This does not follow. There can be delivery problems between Gmail and m365 - and even between m365 and m365 - and vice-versa.

> There can be delivery problems between Gmail and m365 - and even ... - and vice-versa. Absolutely not on the same scale as 'your' mail-in-a-box toy, though. I'm with OP, even for those who can roll Exim with NixOS or whatever the latest fashion is: mail is not worth the hassle. I pay Zoho and do/host better things with my time [nearly anything] , I have nothing to prove. They [or another provider, not an ad] can fi…

[deleted]

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#66

Post by commandersaki »

Bender wrote: post #24
commandersaki wrote: post #16

I used to host my own email until switching to Fastmail. I recall roundcube to be pretty much the best webmail offering back when I was hosting but also severely lacking two important features: 1. Fast search against mailbox folders/labels with say 100k+ messages. 2. Handling multiple aliases, both individual and catch-all, and being able to automatically respond with the correct alias if an email is received using o…

But the real reason I stopped running my own mail is that I didn't trust myself with regular backups (even though I still do them via IMAP on occasion) and disaster recovery. I don't think anyone self-hosting really has this figured out. On the server itself a cronjob calling rsnapshot [1] is a good habit in the event something gets corrupted or someone deletes mail by mistake and you want to save the day . RSnapshot…

Not that helpful if say your server has been attacked by ransomware. Happened to my friend that I was colo-ing with who was running a mailserver at the time. He didn't have proper backups and/or DR (though I think his thick mail client had a copy of most of his mail); he didn't pay and instead moved everything to Fastmail.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#67

Post by crossroadsguy »

isaachinman wrote: post #36
comrade1234 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use apple mail and iOS mail. At one point my wife was using whatever Microsoft's email/calendar/contacts app is called but she's long-switched to apple products. On the server I have sogo running so I also use iCal and the Mac and iOS contacts apps.

Are you happy with Apple/iOS Mail? Drives me absolutely insane.

It does but honestly less than those cloyingly glossy and sluggish Electron/hybrid apps out there. So it's not like we users are spoilt for choice.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#68

Post by em-bee »

tsukikage wrote: post #8
jeroenhd wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole IP reputation problem seems to mostly be a Google/Microsoft problem. Unfortunately, most of the world seems to use one of those two platforms. Routing mail to those two services via a third party seems like the wisest choice. May I ask how you implemented that?

I use exim4. So after doing the usual SES setup, I can change the smarthost router to look like this: SMARTHOST_FOR_MS = email-smtp.us-east-2.amazonaws.com::587 smarthost: debug_print = "R: smarthost for $local_part@$domain" driver = manualroute domains = ! +local_domains transport = remote_smtp_smarthost route_list = hotmail.com SMARTHOST_FOR_MS byname ; \ live.com SMARTHOST_FOR_MS byname ; \ outlook.com SMARTHOST_F…

how does that work with SPF, DMARC, DKIM?

don't you have to authorize email-smtp.us-east-2.amazonaws.com to send email on your behalf?

if you don't wouldn't every spammer use that?

also, how much does that cost? i don't need to send more than a dozen email per year like that.

Re: Self-hosting email in 2025 is easy actually (apart from M365)

#70

Post by immibis »

pseudalopex wrote: post #59
immibis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft 365 is corporate business email for corporate businesses. If you're a corporate business, you're already using it, and if you're not then you probably don't want to talk to anyone who's using it anyway. Even if you could pass their filtering, they'd just manually ignore your emails because they only want to talk to corporate businesses.

Microsoft 365 has personal, family, small business, enterprise, and education plans. Businesses use email for customer service and hiring also.

Maybe persons and families should stop using email services that refuse to deliver them the emails they want. If I personally use /dev/null as my inbox does it become your problem to ensure mail delivery?

I recommend that whenever you know someone cares about receiving an email much more than you care about them receiving it, just send it. They'll do what they have to, and this way we can weed bad providers out of the market. Some websites with email verified sign-up have a simple FAQ to let you know what's causing the problem.

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