7 ms·

Interesting product with great potential. Their website doesn't seem to address my two main concerns: 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to th

by keehun 8y ago

Interesting product with great potential. Their website doesn't seem to address my two main concerns: 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft? 2. How would the product work in case Helm the company/service goes away (or even just service outage)? Can the device work on its own without the need for their web service (perhaps with lower delivery rate/higher spam score)? They claim: >> We’ve designed your Helm to ensure as little information about you as possible is communicated back to us. That’s why the only account you create is directly with your server, not with us, and why only encrypted data passes through our servers. But how does that work with sending emails? (Please excuse my ignorance on this matter.)

rataata_jr 8y ago
There are very good open source projects, namely rspamd etc.
- Hello71 8y ago
  That helps check that you don't receive spam (and even so, rspamd is much weaker when applied to only one account). It doesn't fix sending other people what looks like spam.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    I recall one of the major bulk mail services (perhaps Campaign Monitor?) has a service where you can feed your intended outbound mail into a large range of spam checking services before you send it, to alert you to problems in your mail that are likely to trigger spam filters. (On the other side of that problem though, if my email account starts sending mail "what looks like spam", it's almost certainly because my account's been compromised and is actually sending spam. There's a _start_ difference between typical personal person-to-person email and spam. I suspect _some_ business email might blur the line there - but part of me thinks if your business email is blurring the line about being "spammy", then it deserves to get filtered...)
wpietri 8y ago
Yeah, as somebody who has run their own mail server for years, #1 is a huge concern. It has been a real struggle for me despite having a server I own in a rack with net-neighbors I know. Another big one for me is the failure modes. What do I do when my home connection is down? How about when my connection is down and I'm traveling? What happens when the hardware fails? How about when the hardware fails 5 years from now? Having email just down for a couple days while you wait for new hardware to would be a very bad experience.
- calcifer 8y ago
  According to their FAQ, you are basically on your own since your device is the MX server: > While offline, emails sent to you will not be delivered. This does not, however, mean that they are lost. If your email server becomes unreachable for any reason, the sender’s email server will periodically retry sending the email at a later time. Email servers are generally configured to retry rapidly at first and then back off and increase the time between retries. > Once your email server comes back online and a retry is performed, you will successfully receive the sent email. If your email server is offline for an extended period of time, the sending server will eventually give up and send a bounce message to the person who sent you the email.
  - jiveturkey 8y ago
    the sounds exactly like the nightmare the GP proposed. what happens when you're on vacation? or even not on vacation but the supply chain is borked or UPS loses your package? even if helm is self-configuring from stored cloud config, this is still a pain and being without email for even a day is painful. 3-5 days (more likely) is intolerable. and if it's longer mail will start to bounce.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  So if they route everything through the same set of EC2 instances, that might actually take care of the SPAM issue. I run my own e-mail server and have run into that same issue of not being able to send to gmail/microsoft addresses (unless I contact the person via Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. and tell them to check their spam folder): https://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-email-unreliable/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made... The way most of these providers deal with spam is they slowly white-list IP addresses. When a company like Mailchip or Mailgun spin up a new server, it's always in a large subnet range they've purchased and they slowly start sending low priority e-mail through it to existing/known receivers and throttle it up to full speed. If you're running a personal server that sends like 5 or 6 e-mails a days, well that's an issue. The big players make it difficult to run a small personal server, but running a dedicated business or corporate server that sends 100s of e-mails per day is typically fine once it's well established. You know what would be a better product? A relay SMTP server that works with Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Fastmail et. al. to pump e-mail from personal servers and ensures it won't get caught in spam filters.
gsreenivas 8y ago
Hi keehun - thanks for posting this on HN! I'm the co-founder and CEO of Helm. 1 - First, we cross reference IP addresses we assign to gateway against known blacklists. This helps ensure emails will be delivered. We also fully support email authentication (DMARC, DKIM, SPF) and configure reverse DNS as well. Lastly, the IP address for a gateway stays fixed so the domain and IP will build reputation over time. Helm servers require the service to work to get around the residential internet connection challenges in the US (port blocking, dynamic IPs, untrusted IPs) 2 - We will be doing 2 things - first, we will publish as open source what is required for people to be able to run their own gateways with their own AWS account in the event Helm has to shut down. Second, the unit economics on the service are positive so as long as we have customers, my co-founder and I are dedicated to running the service. We take a page from Garry Tan and Posthaven in this regard. 3 - The way this works for sending emails, your devices that you compose emails on will connect directly with your Helm server over TLS. Your Helm server will then initiate a TLS session with the server hosting your recipient's email. So we as a company have no visibility to any of that data - at rest, or in transit. I hope this helps - I'm happy to explain this in more detail as needed.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > Your Helm server will then initiate a TLS session with the server hosting your recipient's email I'm not sure how Helm doesn't see the metadata: * For outbound (as described) and inbound mail, do all mail servers support TLS connections? I was under them impression that many still communicate unencrypted. * How does Helm avoid seeing the metadata, who is communicating with whom and when?
  - ryan-c 8y ago
    WRT to TLS, see here: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?hl=en https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?h... It seems that Helm has no obligation or business need to log any metadata if they are providing each customer with a dedicated relay. Any abuse will come from that relay IP and can trivially be attributed to the correct customer.
microcolonel 8y ago
While I see others here who have had trouble with deliverability, I'd just like to say that I have never had a failed delivery to GMail/Google Apps, Yahoo, or Microsoft. There are tools online which will receive email from you and help you configure your system properly for full deliverability. I suspect whatever this Helm thing is, they manage to do things right on that front as well; everything else I don't know.
hannob 8y ago
> 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft? I run mail servers. I believe the idea that mail delivery is a problem for small mail providers is largely a myth. If you act somewhat reasonable (that is: if someone complains to you don't ignore it, don't send spam, check your logs for indications someone might put you on a blocklist) it's no big problem. I think the myth comes largely from people who are actually spammers, but don't see themselves as that.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  I can't speak for outside the UK, but here the ISPs hand out non-static[1] IP addresses to residential customers. These IP ranges are in the spam-block lists that a lot of the other mail providers use. As such sending any email directly from your ISP given IP address is hit-and-miss affair. You don't even get any bounce notifications, the emails just disappear and never arrive at their destination, so you have no idea that something is wrong. Some ISPs allow you to pay for a proper static IP to get around this problem, but again some of the ranges are still in the block lists. The only way I could guarantee that my IP wasn't blacklisted was to switch to a business account with my ISP and thus have IPs from a different range. If you are stuck on a non-static IP, the easiest way around the problem is to send via the SMTP smarthost that your ISP hosts. --- [1] They are technically dynamic IPs, but are sticky in that you keep the same IP unless your router goes offline for more than a couple of hours.
- m3nu 8y ago
  Same experience. Mostly fine to run your own server. I check the blocklist status of the IP before moving/setting up a new server. We end up on Hotmail/Outlook's blocklist about once a year. They remove it within 1-2 hours after opening a ticket.
  - johnny22 8y ago
    I lost $150 because a certain mail didn't arrive in time (an intercity bus trip ticket) when I couldn't actually afford to lose that money. I had to borrow money from a friend. Those 1-2 hours were quite valuable!

by keehun 8y ago

rataata_jr 8y ago

There are very good open source projects, namely rspamd etc.

Hello71 8y ago
That helps check that you don't receive spam (and even so, rspamd is much weaker when applied to only one account). It doesn't fix sending other people what looks like spam.
- bigiain 8y ago
  I recall one of the major bulk mail services (perhaps Campaign Monitor?) has a service where you can feed your intended outbound mail into a large range of spam checking services before you send it, to alert you to problems in your mail that are likely to trigger spam filters. (On the other side of that problem though, if my email account starts sending mail "what looks like spam", it's almost certainly because my account's been compromised and is actually sending spam. There's a _start_ difference between typical personal person-to-person email and spam. I suspect _some_ business email might blur the line there - but part of me thinks if your business email is blurring the line about being "spammy", then it deserves to get filtered...)

wpietri 8y ago

Yeah, as somebody who has run their own mail server for years, #1 is a huge concern. It has been a real struggle for me despite having a server I own in a rack with net-neighbors I know. Another big one for me is the failure modes. What do I do when my home connection is down? How about when my connection is down and I'm traveling? What happens when the hardware fails? How about when the hardware fails 5 years from now? Having email just down for a couple days while you wait for new hardware to would be a very bad experience.

calcifer 8y ago
According to their FAQ, you are basically on your own since your device is the MX server: > While offline, emails sent to you will not be delivered. This does not, however, mean that they are lost. If your email server becomes unreachable for any reason, the sender’s email server will periodically retry sending the email at a later time. Email servers are generally configured to retry rapidly at first and then back off and increase the time between retries. > Once your email server comes back online and a retry is performed, you will successfully receive the sent email. If your email server is offline for an extended period of time, the sending server will eventually give up and send a bounce message to the person who sent you the email.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  the sounds exactly like the nightmare the GP proposed. what happens when you're on vacation? or even not on vacation but the supply chain is borked or UPS loses your package? even if helm is self-configuring from stored cloud config, this is still a pain and being without email for even a day is painful. 3-5 days (more likely) is intolerable. and if it's longer mail will start to bounce.
djsumdog 8y ago
So if they route everything through the same set of EC2 instances, that might actually take care of the SPAM issue. I run my own e-mail server and have run into that same issue of not being able to send to gmail/microsoft addresses (unless I contact the person via Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/etc. and tell them to check their spam folder): https://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-email-unreliable/ https://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made... The way most of these providers deal with spam is they slowly white-list IP addresses. When a company like Mailchip or Mailgun spin up a new server, it's always in a large subnet range they've purchased and they slowly start sending low priority e-mail through it to existing/known receivers and throttle it up to full speed. If you're running a personal server that sends like 5 or 6 e-mails a days, well that's an issue. The big players make it difficult to run a small personal server, but running a dedicated business or corporate server that sends 100s of e-mails per day is typically fine once it's well established. You know what would be a better product? A relay SMTP server that works with Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Fastmail et. al. to pump e-mail from personal servers and ensures it won't get caught in spam filters.

gsreenivas 8y ago

Hi keehun - thanks for posting this on HN! I'm the co-founder and CEO of Helm. 1 - First, we cross reference IP addresses we assign to gateway against known blacklists. This helps ensure emails will be delivered. We also fully support email authentication (DMARC, DKIM, SPF) and configure reverse DNS as well. Lastly, the IP address for a gateway stays fixed so the domain and IP will build reputation over time. Helm servers require the service to work to get around the residential internet connection challenges in the US (port blocking, dynamic IPs, untrusted IPs) 2 - We will be doing 2 things - first, we will publish as open source what is required for people to be able to run their own gateways with their own AWS account in the event Helm has to shut down. Second, the unit economics on the service are positive so as long as we have customers, my co-founder and I are dedicated to running the service. We take a page from Garry Tan and Posthaven in this regard. 3 - The way this works for sending emails, your devices that you compose emails on will connect directly with your Helm server over TLS. Your Helm server will then initiate a TLS session with the server hosting your recipient's email. So we as a company have no visibility to any of that data - at rest, or in transit. I hope this helps - I'm happy to explain this in more detail as needed.

forapurpose 8y ago
> Your Helm server will then initiate a TLS session with the server hosting your recipient's email I'm not sure how Helm doesn't see the metadata: * For outbound (as described) and inbound mail, do all mail servers support TLS connections? I was under them impression that many still communicate unencrypted. * How does Helm avoid seeing the metadata, who is communicating with whom and when?
- ryan-c 8y ago
  WRT to TLS, see here: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?hl=en https://transparencyreport.google.com/safer-email/overview?h... It seems that Helm has no obligation or business need to log any metadata if they are providing each customer with a dedicated relay. Any abuse will come from that relay IP and can trivially be attributed to the correct customer.

microcolonel 8y ago

While I see others here who have had trouble with deliverability, I'd just like to say that I have never had a failed delivery to GMail/Google Apps, Yahoo, or Microsoft. There are tools online which will receive email from you and help you configure your system properly for full deliverability. I suspect whatever this Helm thing is, they manage to do things right on that front as well; everything else I don't know.

hannob 8y ago

> 1. How do they ensure high, non-spam delivery rates to the main email services like Gmail, Fastmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft? I run mail servers. I believe the idea that mail delivery is a problem for small mail providers is largely a myth. If you act somewhat reasonable (that is: if someone complains to you don't ignore it, don't send spam, check your logs for indications someone might put you on a blocklist) it's no big problem. I think the myth comes largely from people who are actually spammers, but don't see themselves as that.

Jaruzel 8y ago
I can't speak for outside the UK, but here the ISPs hand out non-static[1] IP addresses to residential customers. These IP ranges are in the spam-block lists that a lot of the other mail providers use. As such sending any email directly from your ISP given IP address is hit-and-miss affair. You don't even get any bounce notifications, the emails just disappear and never arrive at their destination, so you have no idea that something is wrong. Some ISPs allow you to pay for a proper static IP to get around this problem, but again some of the ranges are still in the block lists. The only way I could guarantee that my IP wasn't blacklisted was to switch to a business account with my ISP and thus have IPs from a different range. If you are stuck on a non-static IP, the easiest way around the problem is to send via the SMTP smarthost that your ISP hosts. --- [1] They are technically dynamic IPs, but are sticky in that you keep the same IP unless your router goes offline for more than a couple of hours.
m3nu 8y ago
Same experience. Mostly fine to run your own server. I check the blocklist status of the IP before moving/setting up a new server. We end up on Hotmail/Outlook's blocklist about once a year. They remove it within 1-2 hours after opening a ticket.
- johnny22 8y ago
  I lost $150 because a certain mail didn't arrive in time (an intercity bus trip ticket) when I couldn't actually afford to lose that money. I had to borrow money from a friend. Those 1-2 hours were quite valuable!