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It's weird how 'the cloud' has put people into the mindset where email isn't just a complementary service that runs alongside the web server and just works. Nop

It's weird how 'the cloud' has put people into the mindset where email isn't just a complementary service that runs alongside the web server and just works. Nope. Sign up for a third party service and if you're serious pay for it.

untog 11y ago
I see it as a good thing. It is non-trivial to run a service like this, and it makes sense to use a third-party service is they are affordable.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  How is infinitely more expensive than free affordable? And how is it good that it is non-trivial to run your own mail server?
  - baudehlo 11y ago
    It's not good that it sucks to run your own mail server. It actually sucks. But it is reality because spam burned the world. Companies that provide these services have to spend countless hours stopping spammers using their services to send mail. But they do it for your benefit, despite the small costs. Sending email is cheap, and any reasonable business is probably having sending email as one of its lowest costs. We really should be grateful to most of these companies to work so hard on our behalf to keep it that way.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
      > Sending email is cheap, and any reasonable business is probably having sending email as one of its lowest costs. And what about individuals? > We really should be grateful to most of these companies to work so hard on our behalf to keep it that way. I don't think so. They are also keeping it hard to run your own mail server. Plus, they get to have access to tons of other people's emails, which is a terrible idea. What's the point of introducing SMTP-STS when you then create some few central entities that hold all the keys?
tyingq 11y ago
I think it's less "the cloud" and more about things like SPF, Domain Keys, spam filtering, etc. It's not trivial any more to spin up your own mail server.
joshmanders 11y ago
I'd rather pay $25/mo to another company to make sure I'm spam compliant and that my emails reach my customers.
tehbeard 11y ago
The problem with running email yourself is keeping it working. Given the choice of dealing with IP blacklists at block level or paying a few quid a month is a no brainer for lots, before you factor in the other benefits of 3rd party mail (scheduling, templating, integration of campaign primitives like un-subscribing, analytics etc)
verelo 11y ago
This is exactly why services like RDS, Redshift, S3 and others are killing it. People don't want to deal with the finer details of running a server of any kind, they just want the service it provides. Running a mail server is a lot of work, and you have a lot of responsibility when it comes to securing it to make sure it doesn't become a source of unauthorized spam.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  > and you have a lot of responsibility when it comes to securing it to make sure it doesn't become a source of unauthorized spam. Hu? How is that more difficult than making sure that your $mailservice account doesn't become a source of spam?
  - verelo 11y ago
    Besides the obvious and easily preventable case of someone setting up an open relay, there is plenty of risk associated associated simply with the presence of a SMTP server. The providers out there will require you to setup DKIM, SPF records and have a decent password associated with your account...if you're running the box yourself, this all suddenly becomes optional.
brightball 11y ago
Spam has made this a bigger deal. Many cloud ip addresses are untrusted by email filters and ip reputation is a big deal. Companies like Sendgrid will actively safeguard and report on those reputations as well as working to prevent abuse by their users. I once sent a companies first newsletter after 14 years to about 300,000 people using our Sendgrid plan and a self-hosted PHP newsletter tool that we'd paid for (the name escapes me). The first several hundred bounces happened and they froze our deliveries, called us up and grilled us about where we got our email list. Once we proved the origin they let everything go again and didn't have another problem. It was a little shocking at first but at the same time, it's good to know how aggressively they work to protect deliverability. You don't get that by running your own and it's an even bigger deal if you have user generated content triggering messages.
pnathan 11y ago
> It's weird how 'the cloud' has put people into the mindset where email isn't just a complementary service that runs alongside the web server and just works. Nope. Sign up for a third party service and if you're serious pay for it. It's more that the big feudal lords don't accept trade from small freeholders.

untog 11y ago

I see it as a good thing. It is non-trivial to run a service like this, and it makes sense to use a third-party service is they are affordable.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
How is infinitely more expensive than free affordable? And how is it good that it is non-trivial to run your own mail server?
- baudehlo 11y ago
  It's not good that it sucks to run your own mail server. It actually sucks. But it is reality because spam burned the world. Companies that provide these services have to spend countless hours stopping spammers using their services to send mail. But they do it for your benefit, despite the small costs. Sending email is cheap, and any reasonable business is probably having sending email as one of its lowest costs. We really should be grateful to most of these companies to work so hard on our behalf to keep it that way.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
    > Sending email is cheap, and any reasonable business is probably having sending email as one of its lowest costs. And what about individuals? > We really should be grateful to most of these companies to work so hard on our behalf to keep it that way. I don't think so. They are also keeping it hard to run your own mail server. Plus, they get to have access to tons of other people's emails, which is a terrible idea. What's the point of introducing SMTP-STS when you then create some few central entities that hold all the keys?

tyingq 11y ago

I think it's less "the cloud" and more about things like SPF, Domain Keys, spam filtering, etc. It's not trivial any more to spin up your own mail server.

joshmanders 11y ago

I'd rather pay $25/mo to another company to make sure I'm spam compliant and that my emails reach my customers.

tehbeard 11y ago

The problem with running email yourself is keeping it working. Given the choice of dealing with IP blacklists at block level or paying a few quid a month is a no brainer for lots, before you factor in the other benefits of 3rd party mail (scheduling, templating, integration of campaign primitives like un-subscribing, analytics etc)

verelo 11y ago

This is exactly why services like RDS, Redshift, S3 and others are killing it. People don't want to deal with the finer details of running a server of any kind, they just want the service it provides. Running a mail server is a lot of work, and you have a lot of responsibility when it comes to securing it to make sure it doesn't become a source of unauthorized spam.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
> and you have a lot of responsibility when it comes to securing it to make sure it doesn't become a source of unauthorized spam. Hu? How is that more difficult than making sure that your $mailservice account doesn't become a source of spam?
- verelo 11y ago
  Besides the obvious and easily preventable case of someone setting up an open relay, there is plenty of risk associated associated simply with the presence of a SMTP server. The providers out there will require you to setup DKIM, SPF records and have a decent password associated with your account...if you're running the box yourself, this all suddenly becomes optional.

brightball 11y ago

Spam has made this a bigger deal. Many cloud ip addresses are untrusted by email filters and ip reputation is a big deal. Companies like Sendgrid will actively safeguard and report on those reputations as well as working to prevent abuse by their users. I once sent a companies first newsletter after 14 years to about 300,000 people using our Sendgrid plan and a self-hosted PHP newsletter tool that we'd paid for (the name escapes me). The first several hundred bounces happened and they froze our deliveries, called us up and grilled us about where we got our email list. Once we proved the origin they let everything go again and didn't have another problem. It was a little shocking at first but at the same time, it's good to know how aggressively they work to protect deliverability. You don't get that by running your own and it's an even bigger deal if you have user generated content triggering messages.

pnathan 11y ago

> It's weird how 'the cloud' has put people into the mindset where email isn't just a complementary service that runs alongside the web server and just works. Nope. Sign up for a third party service and if you're serious pay for it. It's more that the big feudal lords don't accept trade from small freeholders.