4 ms·

can anyone explain what benefits are to a managed email service over rolling your own on a vps server with stuff like mailinabox? you use your custom domain any

can anyone explain what benefits are to a managed email service over rolling your own on a vps server with stuff like mailinabox? you use your custom domain anyways and it allows s3 or backblaze backups so data retention is not an issue. you use your custom domain so in case something stupid happens to your vps provider, you can just restore and be done with it? and its not like managing your own vps email server is much of a hassle, every few months you have to update the install script and thats it

vzaliva 5y ago
because of spam many systems agessively block email delivery from IP addresses which do not known to belong to well established mail providers with millions of users. And it is very tedious to unblock it on case by case basis. This is the reason I've stopped running my personal mail server 10 years ago.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  well there are checks to see if your ip address is blocked as spam. even then you can just ask your vps provider for giving you a fresh one.
  - vzaliva 5y ago
    yea, but it have to be done constantly. Somehow you never sure your messages are delivered or if people can reach you. At some point after running my onw mail infrastructure for 15 years I gave up and decided that I would like to oursource this to somebody else, a email provider who have a dedicated team of admins making sure my mail is delivered, so I do not have to worry and spend time on it myself.
- ZWoz 5y ago
  If you have new IP and that IP don't have bad history, then your main issue is hotmail and Office365. There is little bit rate limiting over next 24h period, but if you host yourself and don't send unsolicidated bulk messages, then you don't see those limits. Some anti-spam services graylist you, that causes usually 5 minute delay for delivery. 90% spam score comes from message, sending server isn't that relevant (if you base configuration is reasonable: PTR is right, server knows it's hostname and don't EHLO himself as localhost and so on). You can look at SpamAssassin default rulebase[1] for common rules. --- [1] - https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html
ZWoz 5y ago
People in HN are weirdly afraid running own mail server. Thats not that hard. If you are web developer, who is capable setting up linux+varnish+nginx+php-fpm+redis+mariadb stack, then I would say that functional mail server has less moving pieces. I think most horror stories are related to trying run own server in bad neighborhood, in some cheap VPS service. Now entire IP block has bad reputation and indeed there is hassle with delivery.
- cedilla 5y ago
  It's not that weird. Mail is the only critical thing most people run for themselves, really; and if the proverbial excrement hits the fan, mail is useful in fixing the fallout. Sure, I would be able to acquire the skills to run a mail server, and I know how to monitor it all, and I know about what the moving parts are. But why go through all that hassle to save 10-40 dollars a year?
  - ZWoz 5y ago
    There isn't much breaking usually, I really don't remember big issues in my 15+ years self-hosting time. I have changed colocation place several times, some places have been offices with average office internet (without redundant links or BGP peering). I can see issues, if you over-engineer and try build some microservice farm in some cloud provider, but simple physical server with DC grade disks in RAID and backup (tested and out of server) is pretty reliable. Of course, when you really don't want to do it, then paying for someone else is reasonable, no issue with that. But its not fair to make mail self-hosting look like something very complicated and dangerous, I would say that modern web service stacks are more complicated and fragile. Lots of guys here are writing own internet facing software, handling customer data. Compared to that, using pre-existing mail server software isn't that hard.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      i wrote how i used "mailinabox" https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ this makes it stupid easy to set up your server. you have to do little config and you are up and running. I decided to do miab because i had a necessity of "email aliases" in hundreds. none of these low cost email providers allowed that, unless i went with google workspace or 365 if i remember correctly. rolling my own solved this issue and for the same price plus the "management headache" which i saw as a personal challenge more than a chore. so i am very happy with the results. gmail has given me headaches in the start but if i send more than a few emails with attachments to gmail, they still flag all emails as spam so that is a recurring problem but not something i cannot live without

vzaliva 5y ago

because of spam many systems agessively block email delivery from IP addresses which do not known to belong to well established mail providers with millions of users. And it is very tedious to unblock it on case by case basis. This is the reason I've stopped running my personal mail server 10 years ago.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago
well there are checks to see if your ip address is blocked as spam. even then you can just ask your vps provider for giving you a fresh one.
- vzaliva 5y ago
  yea, but it have to be done constantly. Somehow you never sure your messages are delivered or if people can reach you. At some point after running my onw mail infrastructure for 15 years I gave up and decided that I would like to oursource this to somebody else, a email provider who have a dedicated team of admins making sure my mail is delivered, so I do not have to worry and spend time on it myself.
ZWoz 5y ago
If you have new IP and that IP don't have bad history, then your main issue is hotmail and Office365. There is little bit rate limiting over next 24h period, but if you host yourself and don't send unsolicidated bulk messages, then you don't see those limits. Some anti-spam services graylist you, that causes usually 5 minute delay for delivery. 90% spam score comes from message, sending server isn't that relevant (if you base configuration is reasonable: PTR is right, server knows it's hostname and don't EHLO himself as localhost and so on). You can look at SpamAssassin default rulebase[1] for common rules. --- [1] - https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html https://spamassassin.apache.org/old/tests_3_3_x.html

ZWoz 5y ago

People in HN are weirdly afraid running own mail server. Thats not that hard. If you are web developer, who is capable setting up linux+varnish+nginx+php-fpm+redis+mariadb stack, then I would say that functional mail server has less moving pieces. I think most horror stories are related to trying run own server in bad neighborhood, in some cheap VPS service. Now entire IP block has bad reputation and indeed there is hassle with delivery.

cedilla 5y ago
It's not that weird. Mail is the only critical thing most people run for themselves, really; and if the proverbial excrement hits the fan, mail is useful in fixing the fallout. Sure, I would be able to acquire the skills to run a mail server, and I know how to monitor it all, and I know about what the moving parts are. But why go through all that hassle to save 10-40 dollars a year?
- ZWoz 5y ago
  There isn't much breaking usually, I really don't remember big issues in my 15+ years self-hosting time. I have changed colocation place several times, some places have been offices with average office internet (without redundant links or BGP peering). I can see issues, if you over-engineer and try build some microservice farm in some cloud provider, but simple physical server with DC grade disks in RAID and backup (tested and out of server) is pretty reliable. Of course, when you really don't want to do it, then paying for someone else is reasonable, no issue with that. But its not fair to make mail self-hosting look like something very complicated and dangerous, I would say that modern web service stacks are more complicated and fragile. Lots of guys here are writing own internet facing software, handling customer data. Compared to that, using pre-existing mail server software isn't that hard.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    i wrote how i used "mailinabox" https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/ this makes it stupid easy to set up your server. you have to do little config and you are up and running. I decided to do miab because i had a necessity of "email aliases" in hundreds. none of these low cost email providers allowed that, unless i went with google workspace or 365 if i remember correctly. rolling my own solved this issue and for the same price plus the "management headache" which i saw as a personal challenge more than a chore. so i am very happy with the results. gmail has given me headaches in the start but if i send more than a few emails with attachments to gmail, they still flag all emails as spam so that is a recurring problem but not something i cannot live without