5 ms·

Assuming you are ultimately comparing 'shared/managed' email hosting vs self-managed/self-hosted then Spam (well, filtering spam) is the biggest issue you have

by dotBen 17y ago

Assuming you are ultimately comparing 'shared/managed' email hosting vs self-managed/self-hosted then Spam (well, filtering spam) is the biggest issue you have to resolve. Try turning off spam checking on any email address that's been around the net a few years. The upside of GMail (and other shared-services) is that you are benefiting from their collective wisdom of incoming spam landscape - they see the bigger picture from everyone's accounts in aggregate... which is why their spam filters are so much more effective than bayesian filtering -- which is the only tool you have if you 'go it alone' on email With an email address that dates back to 1994 and listed all over Usenet before we knew it would be indexed by DejaNews/Google, I need the spam protection and so I'll always go shared-hosted (Gmail for now).

andrewtj 17y ago
Bayesian filters aren't the only anti-spam tool around. I've found Greylisting to be quite effective myself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting
dpifke 17y ago
...which is why their spam filters are so much more effective than bayesian filtering -- which is the only tool you have if you 'go it alone' on email This is not true at all. Of the top of my head, I can think of three different distributed message hashing services (Razor, Pyzor, and DCC) that function similar to a shared Bayesian filter, not to mention all the various IP and URI blacklists that collect and share data about bad actors. I've actually done mail server installs where I've turned off the local bayes filters to improve results because they were getting confused by low volumes. SpamAssassin comes with just about every Linux distribution and is used by major ISPs, so you're not "going it alone," you're leveraging what a huge percentage of the internet population is already using. It's not without effort (maybe 15-30 minutes/week of tweaking when something slips through), but my personal email setup gives me as good or better results than my infrequently-used Gmail account.

by dotBen 17y ago

andrewtj 17y ago

Bayesian filters aren't the only anti-spam tool around. I've found Greylisting to be quite effective myself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greylisting

dpifke 17y ago

...which is why their spam filters are so much more effective than bayesian filtering -- which is the only tool you have if you 'go it alone' on email This is not true at all. Of the top of my head, I can think of three different distributed message hashing services (Razor, Pyzor, and DCC) that function similar to a shared Bayesian filter, not to mention all the various IP and URI blacklists that collect and share data about bad actors. I've actually done mail server installs where I've turned off the local bayes filters to improve results because they were getting confused by low volumes. SpamAssassin comes with just about every Linux distribution and is used by major ISPs, so you're not "going it alone," you're leveraging what a huge percentage of the internet population is already using. It's not without effort (maybe 15-30 minutes/week of tweaking when something slips through), but my personal email setup gives me as good or better results than my infrequently-used Gmail account.