71–80 of 190 posts
"After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32715437
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-...
I used to do this. What finally killed it wasn't reputation, it was the fact that I needed 100% uptime or risk losing messages, getting my address blacklisted, etc. Email is supposed to be resilient to down time (retries, trying each MX record, etc.) but I found that large mail providers tend to just bounce and walk away. Worse, GitHub (back in 2016 and 2018) would mark a recipient as "unavailable" after a single bou…
Q: If your server(s) is/are offline for a few hours, why would you "lose messages"?
I've just checked my own email server -> "up 219 days"
Honestly, compared with the stuff we do all day, this is not hard...
I used to do this. What finally killed it wasn't reputation, it was the fact that I needed 100% uptime or risk losing messages, getting my address blacklisted, etc. Email is supposed to be resilient to down time (retries, trying each MX record, etc.) but I found that large mail providers tend to just bounce and walk away. Worse, GitHub (back in 2016 and 2018) would mark a recipient as "unavailable" after a single bou…
> it was the fact that I needed 100% uptime or risk losing messages Q: If your server(s) is/are offline for a few hours, why would you "lose messages"? I've just checked my own email server -> "up 219 days" Honestly, compared with the stuff we do all day, this is not hard ...
They said...
>> Email is supposed to be resilient to down time (retries, trying each MX record, etc.) but I found that large mail providers tend to just bounce and walk away.
I take that to mean that if your server isn't availble to receive the mail at the time it is first offered, it won't be retried later. That wasn't the case (for most mail) when I gave up on self hosting 10 years ago, but it's plausible.
I used to do this. What finally killed it wasn't reputation, it was the fact that I needed 100% uptime or risk losing messages, getting my address blacklisted, etc. Email is supposed to be resilient to down time (retries, trying each MX record, etc.) but I found that large mail providers tend to just bounce and walk away. Worse, GitHub (back in 2016 and 2018) would mark a recipient as "unavailable" after a single bou…
Host your own mail. I get 99% deliverability with 0 repuation since i do dkim and spf correct.
Don't be distracted by the "complexity" - if you config right it's totally doable.
Gives you actual private caldav too btw
(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…
I really don’t want to live in a world where only two or three companies run email for the entire world, and this is my little act of resistance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it was the fact that I needed 100% uptime or risk losing messages Q: If your server(s) is/are offline for a few hours, why would you "lose messages"? I've just checked my own email server -> "up 219 days" Honestly, compared with the stuff we do all day, this is not hard ...
> Q: If your server(s) is/are offline for a few hours, why would you "lose messages"? They said... >> Email is supposed to be resilient to down time (retries, trying each MX record, etc.) but I found that large mail providers tend to just bounce and walk away. I take that to mean that if your server isn't availble to receive the mail at the time it is first offered, it won't be retried later. That wasn't the case (fo…
Host your own!!
(had to dug my comment from under a flagged parent) I self-hosted for well over 20 years, I did not throw the towel and I do not plan to. Self-hosting is a sign of pride. Neither my government nor my Prime Minister nor even my Ministry of Interior or Foreign Ministry can host their own email. Last time I checked, only State Security self-hosted. I was probably lucky, but I rarely had delivery problems. The last one w…
A simple docker compose up can get a reasonably working setup [1]
[0]https://github.com/hyvor/relay [1]https://relay.hyvor.com/hosting/deploy-easy
Here is my advice to anyone wanting to test out self-hosting email. Start by using your self-hosted email to sign-up for accounts. You don't have to use the email address for your personal correspondence Use Mail-in-a-box to get started [1]. You can literally set it up in a couple of hours by following the instructions and everything should just work. After a few years, you can think about switching your personal cor…
I can recommend Stalwart [1] which is a complete mail service contained in a single binary, that doesn't really have any external dependencies, and is really easy to install and update. I've looked (and tried) a few other projects in the past, but Stalwart was the easiest to setup, and I haven't had any issues with it so far. [1] https://github.com/stalwartlabs/stalwart
This looks really nice, especially also for saas projects.
If you do it yourself and do it correct it's a pleasure. I have automatic updates with automatic reboot, tailored systemd to make sure all is well and status reports per mail - total bliss, easy 2-3 years, with trixie now even 5 until you have to touch it again.
It's mature software.
Host yourself! The peace of mind and control is totally worth it.