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What? I have been managing my own mail server and domain for 10+ years now, and apart from a few days spent reading up on DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc., it has been mo

What? I have been managing my own mail server and domain for 10+ years now, and apart from a few days spent reading up on DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc., it has been mostly set and forget.

jocoda 8y ago
My experience has been likewise. Only problem I had, and still have in the short term, is that one server's IP C block has been flagged by one spam service. And even though my server's IP gets a clean bill of health from all other SPAM services, outlook.com refuses to accept mail from that server. I had them white list the IP but it reverted shortly after that. The ISP (strato) refuses to do anything about it, and not sure if there is anything they can do, so all I can do is vote with my feet. Otherwise, running a personal mail server is hardly any effort at all. Use Webmin for admin.
- algesten 8y ago
  it's only outlook.com? you can't fix it? i mean that's a rather large group of people you can't communicate with right there. and it's the only one you know about. i say this is the exact reason running your own mail server in 2018 is problematic. you just chose to not consider it a problem.
  - tolien 8y ago
    > i say this is the exact reason running your own mail server in 2018 is problematic. It's a reason why allowing these fairly core services to be provided by a shrinking group of organisations is equally problematic. Maybe one day Google will decide that they get too much spam from outlook.com (or vice versa) and cut them off too. What are you going to do about it, set up your own mail server? Vote with your feet to another provider? Start a company doing the same? Good luck with that.
  - jocoda 8y ago
    It's not the only mail server I have running but it is the only one that has this problem. So bye bye strato. >.. it's the only one you know about. In the case of outlook.com, there's a delivery failure message. My yardstick is gmail.com. If the mail is getting to gmail accounts then I'm confident that it's as good as it is going to get.
nvarsj 8y ago
I did the same for many years. Until I noticed that some people just never got my emails. Mostly people with business emails - I'd send something job related, and never hear back, just assuming they weren't interested. It took me a while to figure out that some email providers (outlook.com is one example) will just outright block small email hosts, despite following all the best practices like DKIM, DMARC, SPF. It's a lost cause trying to host your own email. I've been on fastmail for the last year or so with my custom domain, and it all seems to work great.
- Avamander 8y ago
  > will just outright block small email hosts And that's exactly why self-hosting needs to be more dominant instead of just relinquishing power to large corporations.
- howard941 8y ago
  It's ironic that outlook.com blocked you when it itself is too costly to block in that you can't tell whether the message is important from a contact at say a Fortune 500 or another Nigerian scam. Like you I ran my own stuff but possibly unlike I didn't encounter issues with recipients other than yahoo. I ran it from home from 2001 until last month and paid extra for a /29 static block from the phone company.

What? I have been managing my own mail server and domain for 10+ years now, and apart from a few days spent reading up on DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc., it has been mostly set and forget.

jocoda 8y ago

My experience has been likewise. Only problem I had, and still have in the short term, is that one server's IP C block has been flagged by one spam service. And even though my server's IP gets a clean bill of health from all other SPAM services, outlook.com refuses to accept mail from that server. I had them white list the IP but it reverted shortly after that. The ISP (strato) refuses to do anything about it, and not sure if there is anything they can do, so all I can do is vote with my feet. Otherwise, running a personal mail server is hardly any effort at all. Use Webmin for admin.

algesten 8y ago
it's only outlook.com? you can't fix it? i mean that's a rather large group of people you can't communicate with right there. and it's the only one you know about. i say this is the exact reason running your own mail server in 2018 is problematic. you just chose to not consider it a problem.
- tolien 8y ago
  > i say this is the exact reason running your own mail server in 2018 is problematic. It's a reason why allowing these fairly core services to be provided by a shrinking group of organisations is equally problematic. Maybe one day Google will decide that they get too much spam from outlook.com (or vice versa) and cut them off too. What are you going to do about it, set up your own mail server? Vote with your feet to another provider? Start a company doing the same? Good luck with that.
- jocoda 8y ago
  It's not the only mail server I have running but it is the only one that has this problem. So bye bye strato. >.. it's the only one you know about. In the case of outlook.com, there's a delivery failure message. My yardstick is gmail.com. If the mail is getting to gmail accounts then I'm confident that it's as good as it is going to get.

nvarsj 8y ago

I did the same for many years. Until I noticed that some people just never got my emails. Mostly people with business emails - I'd send something job related, and never hear back, just assuming they weren't interested. It took me a while to figure out that some email providers (outlook.com is one example) will just outright block small email hosts, despite following all the best practices like DKIM, DMARC, SPF. It's a lost cause trying to host your own email. I've been on fastmail for the last year or so with my custom domain, and it all seems to work great.

Avamander 8y ago
> will just outright block small email hosts And that's exactly why self-hosting needs to be more dominant instead of just relinquishing power to large corporations.
howard941 8y ago
It's ironic that outlook.com blocked you when it itself is too costly to block in that you can't tell whether the message is important from a contact at say a Fortune 500 or another Nigerian scam. Like you I ran my own stuff but possibly unlike I didn't encounter issues with recipients other than yahoo. I ran it from home from 2001 until last month and paid extra for a /29 static block from the phone company.