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I used to self-host my domain's email, moved to Google Apps a couple years ago, and can't imagine going back. The onslaught of open relay probing and inbound s
by Encosia 16y ago
I used to self-host my domain's email, moved to Google Apps a couple years ago, and can't imagine going back.
The onslaught of open relay probing and inbound spam was unbelievable. At some points, I honestly thought I was under a targeted DDoS attack because there were so insanely many inbound connections for hours at a time. Even though I was always able to get it under control, new email-related fires were constantly popping up. Worse, handling all that traffic put considerable load on my server; capacity which would have been better allocated toward serving web traffic.
In the aftermath, I've also noticed that email I send through Google's SMTP server is less often flagged as spam on the receiving end, whereas I had trouble with mail sent through my self-hosted SMTP (and my own ISP's SMTP) ending up in the junk/spam folders at a lot of destinations. That was one of the more insidious drawbacks because it took me a while to fully realize.
At the scale where Google Apps is free (i.e. few enough users that you don't likely have a full-time sysadmin), it's difficult to understand not taking advantage of it. I value my time too much to waste it on unnecessary server administration.
- Niten 16y agoWell I've been running my personal email server (Postfix on a FreeBSD VPS) for four or five years now, and spam just hasn't been an issue for me. Between the Spamhaus ZEN DNSBL, greylisting, and SpamAssassin, I just don't get any appreciable amount of spam in my inbox. (Less than I used to get in my Gmail account.) And as far as I know, I've never missed a message I was supposed to receive. I don't have trouble with outbound mail getting rejected, either... you have to make sure you have a "clean" IP address (didn't end up on a blacklist because of some previous server at that address), you need a valid reverse DNS PTR record, and it's a good idea to have an SPF record and do DKIM signing as well. Now sure, this is more work and more expensive than just using Google Apps. But it does work if you do it right, and it's not "unnecessary administration" if you care at all about the privacy and security of your email, or if you need things like full procmail filtering capabilities that aren't available with Google Apps.
- trotsky 16y agoI agree that self hosted email is in many/most cases a recipe for headaches. But the article wasn't suggesting that you should self host - he was merely saying that in the choice between a free service provider that reads and analyzes all your email - and a pay service provider that doesn't snoop - he figures he'd rather pay a couple of bucks a month.
- Encosia 16y agoGood point; I missed that he was talking specifically about their managed email service vs. their hosting accounts. In terms of confidentiality, the Google Apps for Business terms and conditions are more reasonable than the free version. So, if he's open to paying a couple bucks, it seems like he could have just upgraded and saved the hassle of switching. Looking at the Rackspace offering, I realized that one big item (for me, at least) missing from the comparison is push support for mobile devices. Unless I'm misunderstanding, the Rackspace hosting requires that you purchase the 5x more expensive Exchange hosting in order to get push email support.