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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

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.

zrail 8y ago
"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." That's basically Sendgrid or Mailgun or even Fastmail itself. They can all relay SMTP for arbitrary domains.
- ryan-c 8y ago
  It's actually a totally different product vs Sendgrid/Mailgun/etc. Such a product would need to have a ToS that states it can only be used for low volume personal and business correspondence, and have per-account rate limiting to enforce that. Doing it this way is necessary to avoid having mail treated as bulk. I've tried relaying through mailgun to get mail to outlook.com, it does not work.
  - tyre 8y ago
    Rate-limiting would be interesting. If the cost of the service was specifically high enough to be unscalable. Like, $10 per month and you can send 200 emails per day. That’s expensive compared to anything else but fine for personal use.
    - aidenn0 8y ago
      fastmail already is available for $10 per month, so I guess problem solved?
      - ryan-c 8y ago
        Do they handle a send-only smarthost configuration that allows arbitrary from addresses within a domain?
        zrail 8y ago
        As far as I can tell, yeah.
      - vonseel 8y ago
        Pretty soon email will require stamps, like paper mail. I wonder if they will sell forever stamps? Jk, I just thought it was funny that we pay for services which were always seen as a free alternative to paper mail and stamps were a thing of the past.
        pmontra 8y ago
        Proof of Work basically was invented to cope with email spam. That's more or less a stamp. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
        Fnoord 8y ago
        If you have a KvK in The Netherlands your PII details are public, and you will start receiving physical spam from companies despite such spam not being free to send. I never receive spam from individuals though; only companies. On top of that, the costs of electricity are not the same everywhere (they are very expensive in The Netherlands, for example, than in the USA, and China is very cheap). Nor is it widely stable available everywhere (examples include India and Africa). Proof of Work is basically a waste of energy as well.
jiveturkey 8y ago
> The big players make it difficult to run a small personal server how so? the way i see it, only by making it too easy to use them. if you mean, they reject mail from (eg) dynamically assigned home subscriber IP addresses, you can blame spammers for that, not the big email players. There's little to no additional security from having email on-site, and much hassle. Assuming you use google or outlook, the advertising bogeyman is just that - a bogeyman. this is a super niche product, with a lot of useless industro-consumer design thrown in. it's doomed as a business and then where are you? back to gmail.

zrail 8y ago

"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." That's basically Sendgrid or Mailgun or even Fastmail itself. They can all relay SMTP for arbitrary domains.

ryan-c 8y ago
It's actually a totally different product vs Sendgrid/Mailgun/etc. Such a product would need to have a ToS that states it can only be used for low volume personal and business correspondence, and have per-account rate limiting to enforce that. Doing it this way is necessary to avoid having mail treated as bulk. I've tried relaying through mailgun to get mail to outlook.com, it does not work.
- tyre 8y ago
  Rate-limiting would be interesting. If the cost of the service was specifically high enough to be unscalable. Like, $10 per month and you can send 200 emails per day. That’s expensive compared to anything else but fine for personal use.
  - aidenn0 8y ago
    fastmail already is available for $10 per month, so I guess problem solved?
    - ryan-c 8y ago
      Do they handle a send-only smarthost configuration that allows arbitrary from addresses within a domain?
      - zrail 8y ago
        As far as I can tell, yeah.
    - vonseel 8y ago
      Pretty soon email will require stamps, like paper mail. I wonder if they will sell forever stamps? Jk, I just thought it was funny that we pay for services which were always seen as a free alternative to paper mail and stamps were a thing of the past.
      - pmontra 8y ago
        Proof of Work basically was invented to cope with email spam. That's more or less a stamp. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
        Fnoord 8y ago
        If you have a KvK in The Netherlands your PII details are public, and you will start receiving physical spam from companies despite such spam not being free to send. I never receive spam from individuals though; only companies. On top of that, the costs of electricity are not the same everywhere (they are very expensive in The Netherlands, for example, than in the USA, and China is very cheap). Nor is it widely stable available everywhere (examples include India and Africa). Proof of Work is basically a waste of energy as well.

jiveturkey 8y ago

> The big players make it difficult to run a small personal server how so? the way i see it, only by making it too easy to use them. if you mean, they reject mail from (eg) dynamically assigned home subscriber IP addresses, you can blame spammers for that, not the big email players. There's little to no additional security from having email on-site, and much hassle. Assuming you use google or outlook, the advertising bogeyman is just that - a bogeyman. this is a super niche product, with a lot of useless industro-consumer design thrown in. it's doomed as a business and then where are you? back to gmail.