4 ms·

In my experience struggling to deliver email from my self-hosted server, Gmail's by far the worst. Not that I haven't had the occasional issue with Yahoo, Outlo

In my experience struggling to deliver email from my self-hosted server, Gmail's by far the worst. Not that I haven't had the occasional issue with Yahoo, Outlook and AOL. But here's the key difference: Yahoo, Outlook and AOL actually offer tools to resolve the issue! For small senders like me who fall below Gmail's postmaster tools limits, we have no recourse other than trying to find some sympathetic Google employee and DMing them. The experience really blows. I desperately wish Gmail would offer some sort of registration program that would let me attest to my identity and thereby give my server the benefit of the doubt. I'd happily cough up my private medical records if that meant my family's emails reached Gmail's inboxes most of the time.

tambre 7y ago
If you actually are looking for advice, then in descending importance order: * Enforce a DMARC policy instead of explicitly disabling it. * Enforce a strict SPF policy instead of ~all. * Send over IPv6. Usually stricter rules are applied and not-up-to-snuff emails are rejected at the SMTP level. * Your provider hosts lots of spammers for their size. Consider switching. * Enable MTA-STS. The first two I'd consider obvious glaring mistakes. The next two are less important, but would help. MTA-STS is a nice-to-have. I can't analyse your DKIM setup, since I don't know your selector. Feel free to send me a sample email if interested.
- Scramblejams 7y ago
  Thanks for giving it a look! Enforcing DMARC and strict SPF tend to screw up mailing lists and forwarding. I don't see how I can enable them without causing a lot of other problems for me and my users. No arguments about my provider. Any tips on how to select a better one? I'm thinking someone who adds some friction to unblocking outbound port 25, e.g. Vultr, might be better.
  - tambre 7y ago
    DMARC shouldn't be an issue for mailing lists, as long as one of DKIM/SPF passes. Are you seeing reports of both DKIM and SPF failing for mailing lists you use? Properly configured mailing lists shouldn't modify contents of emails causing DKIM to fail. I personally use Linode and would recommend them. But basically any tier 1/2 provider, i.e. too big/popular to block, will do. However, I would avoid DigitalOcean per my experience due to them completely blocking SMTP on IPv6 in addition to badly implemented IPv6 support and seemingly subpar support.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

tambre 7y ago

If you actually are looking for advice, then in descending importance order: * Enforce a DMARC policy instead of explicitly disabling it. * Enforce a strict SPF policy instead of ~all. * Send over IPv6. Usually stricter rules are applied and not-up-to-snuff emails are rejected at the SMTP level. * Your provider hosts lots of spammers for their size. Consider switching. * Enable MTA-STS. The first two I'd consider obvious glaring mistakes. The next two are less important, but would help. MTA-STS is a nice-to-have. I can't analyse your DKIM setup, since I don't know your selector. Feel free to send me a sample email if interested.

Scramblejams 7y ago
Thanks for giving it a look! Enforcing DMARC and strict SPF tend to screw up mailing lists and forwarding. I don't see how I can enable them without causing a lot of other problems for me and my users. No arguments about my provider. Any tips on how to select a better one? I'm thinking someone who adds some friction to unblocking outbound port 25, e.g. Vultr, might be better.
- tambre 7y ago
  DMARC shouldn't be an issue for mailing lists, as long as one of DKIM/SPF passes. Are you seeing reports of both DKIM and SPF failing for mailing lists you use? Properly configured mailing lists shouldn't modify contents of emails causing DKIM to fail. I personally use Linode and would recommend them. But basically any tier 1/2 provider, i.e. too big/popular to block, will do. However, I would avoid DigitalOcean per my experience due to them completely blocking SMTP on IPv6 in addition to badly implemented IPv6 support and seemingly subpar support.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]