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Interestingly, it doesn't look like the author is self-hosting email. I know mail-in-a-box exists, but even with that I find it's worth the peace of mind to pay

Interestingly, it doesn't look like the author is self-hosting email. I know mail-in-a-box exists, but even with that I find it's worth the peace of mind to pay someone else for mail hosting.

SavantIdiot 6y ago
Same here. Over the past 20 years (25?) I've tried numerous times to self-host email and the issues I had with spam and blacklisting were too involved for me to resolve, and only got deeper. Definitely not something to attempt casually.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  No need to self host email, just use your own domain. That way if a provider gives you lip, you move on. It’s the email address itself that is valuable, the emails can be backed up.
  - SavantIdiot 6y ago
    That's true. I already host my domains with the requisite DKIM/SPF CNAME entries, and I supposed I could just export the mailboxes periodically.
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
I ran my own email server on my own domain for years. You're right, it's kind of its own special nightmare to integrate all the parts of a comprehensive email system (I eventually started using Zimbra's free server software because of it), but spam effectively killed being able to self-host more. Even if you setup SPF and DKIM and all the rest, you'll find yourself getting blackholed anyway because you're NOT Google or Apple or Microsoft. It's not like I even sent email in bulk either. It was just my normal, personal account. But getting OFF blackhole lists became enough work that I had to route my mail through Gmail anyway, so I just gave up self-hosting entirely. That was, like, 7 or 8 years ago, though, so maybe things are different now, but I doubt it. I expect it to only have gotten worse.
2ion 6y ago
No problem if you pull your complete mailboxes using a tool like isync/mbsync. I have background jobs, in addition to regular backups, which pull to all my powered on computers every 30m. As long as the source is IMAP, it's very easy to not get screwed. I couldn't care less if my email hoster today would lock me out. I'll point my domain elsewhere and I have all the data as maildirs.

Interestingly, it doesn't look like the author is self-hosting email. I know mail-in-a-box exists, but even with that I find it's worth the peace of mind to pay someone else for mail hosting.

SavantIdiot 6y ago

Same here. Over the past 20 years (25?) I've tried numerous times to self-host email and the issues I had with spam and blacklisting were too involved for me to resolve, and only got deeper. Definitely not something to attempt casually.

imwillofficial 6y ago
No need to self host email, just use your own domain. That way if a provider gives you lip, you move on. It’s the email address itself that is valuable, the emails can be backed up.
- SavantIdiot 6y ago
  That's true. I already host my domains with the requisite DKIM/SPF CNAME entries, and I supposed I could just export the mailboxes periodically.

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

I ran my own email server on my own domain for years. You're right, it's kind of its own special nightmare to integrate all the parts of a comprehensive email system (I eventually started using Zimbra's free server software because of it), but spam effectively killed being able to self-host more. Even if you setup SPF and DKIM and all the rest, you'll find yourself getting blackholed anyway because you're NOT Google or Apple or Microsoft. It's not like I even sent email in bulk either. It was just my normal, personal account. But getting OFF blackhole lists became enough work that I had to route my mail through Gmail anyway, so I just gave up self-hosting entirely. That was, like, 7 or 8 years ago, though, so maybe things are different now, but I doubt it. I expect it to only have gotten worse.

2ion 6y ago

No problem if you pull your complete mailboxes using a tool like isync/mbsync. I have background jobs, in addition to regular backups, which pull to all my powered on computers every 30m. As long as the source is IMAP, it's very easy to not get screwed. I couldn't care less if my email hoster today would lock me out. I'll point my domain elsewhere and I have all the data as maildirs.