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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+re

by 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
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  its not always about saving a buck. i spend more in hosting +domain than i would if i went with fastmail or zoho or whatever. what it feels like is going from google to zoho. when you own the server, you own the backup on s3, you know you can just switch servers if need be. your addresses and everything comes with you. i see this as a hobby if nothing else. maybe others have the same idea
npteljes 5y ago
Email is different from a website, in a way that if the website doesn't load, I can fix it, reload, and go on with the day. After fixing my email stack though, I can't exactly make the sender retry their email. If I miss it, then that's on me, it's a ship that sailed, and often I don't even know about this.

by ZWoz 5y ago

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
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
its not always about saving a buck. i spend more in hosting +domain than i would if i went with fastmail or zoho or whatever. what it feels like is going from google to zoho. when you own the server, you own the backup on s3, you know you can just switch servers if need be. your addresses and everything comes with you. i see this as a hobby if nothing else. maybe others have the same idea

npteljes 5y ago

Email is different from a website, in a way that if the website doesn't load, I can fix it, reload, and go on with the day. After fixing my email stack though, I can't exactly make the sender retry their email. If I miss it, then that's on me, it's a ship that sailed, and often I don't even know about this.