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I have self hosted personal mail for over a decade. There are occasional hiccups with deliverability to new gmail addresses, but that is it. In those cases, onc

I have self hosted personal mail for over a decade. There are occasional hiccups with deliverability to new gmail addresses, but that is it. In those cases, once a recipient marks me as not spam once, there aren’t any more problems. I think maybe once in the last 3 years I ended up in someone’s spam box, total. In fact I just sent to a new gmail address and to a university I have never contacted before this week and both were delivered without issue. Setting up DKIM/SPF/etc isn’t that hard and it’s fairly easy to verify with existing tools FYI.

generalizations 5y ago
It would be amazing if those of you who have successfully self-hosted would get together and make a comprehensive write-up of how to self-host without getting blacklisted. I frequently see comments on both sides of this ("I can't send anything!" vs. "You just have to do it right") and it seems like if there could be some resource (that cuts down the complexity as far as is reasonable) on how to do this from the ground up, there could be much more wide-spread adoption of self-hosting. Personally, I'm hesitant because I don't know if the end of all my effort will be constant blacklisting. If I could be confident that if I do it right I won't get blacklisted, I probably would.
- tomschlick 5y ago
  The biggest thing people do wrong with self hosting email is using residential IPs which are almost universally black/grey listed. Using a provider like linode, and checking the IP reputation ahead of time gave me better results when I self hosted.
  - Dah00n 5y ago
    That's not them doing something wrong though. There's nothing wrong in hosting a server at home. The problem is clearly the black/grey lists if they black/grey list residential IPs just because.
    - syshum 5y ago
      Might want to check the Terms of Use / AUP on your Residential service, because every one I have ever read says you can not host email, and 80% of them say you can host any server of any kind. Now most of them do not actually enforce it unless you become a problem, but most of them do put active measures on the network to stop SMTP Servers For example here is a Exerpt from Comcast AUP prohibiting email and web hosting [1] >>>use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, email, web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers; [1] https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspeedinternetaup https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspe...
      - nanidin 5y ago
        Google Fiber AUP[0] allows for hosting of anything for non-commercial purposes. Email is allowed as long as the email sent is not "unsolicited bulk commercial email". Time to update that worldview :) Every time we repeat something like "no one allows self hosting", the more people that will hear it and repeat it and make it a self fulfilling prophecy. [0] https://fiber.google.com/legal/accepteduse/residential/ https://fiber.google.com/legal/accepteduse/residential/
        syshum 5y ago
        > Time to update that worldview :) Why? Google Fiber is Available to less than 1% of US Households. Comcast is the largest Residential ISP last I looked in about 60-70% of US Markets... ATT has the same policy, and I believe most of the other Cable Providers do as well. My guess would be over 90% of Residential Internet Plans today have a policy inline with Comcast not Google Fiber Pointing to an outlier to the norm does not mean i need to update my worldview at all.
        nanidin 5y ago
  - rootw0rm 5y ago
    i don't know about that. i've always used leased gigabit connections for my email. this article is about Hetzner specifically, which I've leased tons of servers and additional IPs from. AFAIK you don't know the IP you'll be getting until you pay for it unless things have changed recently.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  I think the parent is perhaps just lucky. A reason given for mail not getting to Microsoft servers was that a server IP controlled by the same hosting company had in the past been on a blacklist. I was happy to move hosts to one that was considered trusted, but there was no way for me to know the IPv4 addresses the company had in the past, never mind if they'd been on a pertinent blacklist at some time. Based on that I think it could work, but there are no guarantees that outside, historical characteristics won't screw things up for you.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  I use shared hosting and my trick is to only send emails that are more important to the recipient than to myself. In this way, if they don't receive it, they complain and then I resend it from gmail instead.
- syshum 5y ago
  With Tools like Mail-In-a-Box it is not really the tooling The people that say "I Cant send anything" are likely trying to setup it up on a Residential or "Business" (which is really just a Residential with a slightly better SLA and less overselling) Internet Circuit... Not an Enterprise Internet Circuit Hint: If they are trying to bundle TV Services with your Internet you are not on an Enterprise Line. Even if you buy a dedicated IP from these services they still make is hard to impossible to send email on the circuit
- nanidin 5y ago
  I think I agree with you (RE: make a comprehensive write-up), but I also seem to remember thinking the same thing when I was setting up the latest iteration of the server and then googling it and finding that such a guide already exists :) Part of the problem is that it's an evolving system and things change over time. Spam is an interesting problem. Assuming one self-hosts and makes their email address publicly available, then one can get a metric for how much spam is flying around. Eventually one will try to stop spam from coming to their inbox, and on doing so one might build a mental model for how the big mail providers combat spam and realize why one's emails are not being delivered. Then one might realize that one is sending mail that one would not willingly receive! And then take action to resolve. In general though, there is some base effort to establish trust, and as long as you don't ruin it by sending spam, then you shouldn't end up on a blacklist. If you find that your IP was on a blacklist before it became yours, then work with the people that are blacklisting - but at that point it does become a bit of a job. I actually ran into an issue in my professional life where an AWS WAF rule started alerting on one of our own servers hosted in AWS because someone had previously used the IP for malware C&C. Anyway - I will think on this and see if I can write something up. It's a good idea. My main concern is that there is a gap between the way I did things (sysadmin style) and the "new" way of doing things (containerized).
MrStonedOne 5y ago
you are confusing spam filtering with blocked emails. The issue people have trying to send mail is with the latter, where the email won't even show up in the spam filters, it will either be blocked by the mail system or silently ignored.
- nanidin 5y ago
  When mail has gone undelivered due to non-spam reasons, I typically receive a bounce. On my server, when I block a message due to trust, I reject the connection. When I block due to spam, the message is received but goes in the spam folder. I get reports from Google/Microsoft/etc when other people try to send using my domains but their messages fail due to DKIM/SPF failures. I just want to push back against the “it’s impossible to self host email” meme that seems comes around occasionally. Every time I’ve run into an issue there has been a solution.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > On my server, when I block a message due to trust, I reject the connection. Is that how Google/Microsoft/etc. do it too? If not, then your practice really doesn't matter. Most of my friends have an @gmail.com address, so if Google would pretend to accept mail from my hypothetical mail server, but instead just drop it on the floor, that's a non-starter for me hosting my own mail.
    - nanidin 5y ago
      I have never had a problem sending to gmail or Microsoft addresses that didn’t involve at least making it to the spam box. I can’t speak with absolute certainty how every email admin handles things, but I have run into issues sending mail to some domains where I got a bounce and was able to reach out to the admins and get it corrected. Accepting mail for delivery but failing to deliver must be a violation of some RFC or email standard as it makes it impossible to send mail as a non-megacorp. What I would like to get across is that self hosting is not impossible or unacceptably unreliable. If Google and Microsoft have policies that make it difficult to send messages to gmail or hotmail users, that isn’t a reason in and of itself that we should not self host. It’s a reason that we should work with Google/Microsoft to have better policies - but accepting things as they are and writing off self hosting as impossible is eventually accepting control of email by a limited handful of corporations, which I don’t think is a good thing.
nuker 5y ago
> I have self hosted personal mail for over a decade. Maybe thats why it works for you. Try making new one?
- nanidin 5y ago
  As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the next best time is today. Maybe it is tough to get trusted by the major providers in a short time period today, but if it’s something you’re interested in, don’t let that stop you!
rootw0rm 5y ago
I've also had luck with self-hosted solutions. Gawd, email is a really backwards technology these days isn't it? But...I've also been in the unfortunate position of leasing IPv4 addresses which were already blacklisted by various sources. It's not a terribly easy problem to solve if you need to contact customers NOW without using a 3rd party solution.
hnick 5y ago
I'd imagine personal emails trigger different flags than a bulk newsletter from a small business. One of the key suggestions on setting up a mail server (or even something like Amazon SES) is to 'warm up' by progressively sending more and more emails. Volume and uniqueness are a big part of filters.

generalizations 5y ago

It would be amazing if those of you who have successfully self-hosted would get together and make a comprehensive write-up of how to self-host without getting blacklisted. I frequently see comments on both sides of this ("I can't send anything!" vs. "You just have to do it right") and it seems like if there could be some resource (that cuts down the complexity as far as is reasonable) on how to do this from the ground up, there could be much more wide-spread adoption of self-hosting. Personally, I'm hesitant because I don't know if the end of all my effort will be constant blacklisting. If I could be confident that if I do it right I won't get blacklisted, I probably would.

tomschlick 5y ago
The biggest thing people do wrong with self hosting email is using residential IPs which are almost universally black/grey listed. Using a provider like linode, and checking the IP reputation ahead of time gave me better results when I self hosted.
- Dah00n 5y ago
  That's not them doing something wrong though. There's nothing wrong in hosting a server at home. The problem is clearly the black/grey lists if they black/grey list residential IPs just because.
  - syshum 5y ago
    Might want to check the Terms of Use / AUP on your Residential service, because every one I have ever read says you can not host email, and 80% of them say you can host any server of any kind. Now most of them do not actually enforce it unless you become a problem, but most of them do put active measures on the network to stop SMTP Servers For example here is a Exerpt from Comcast AUP prohibiting email and web hosting [1] >>>use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, email, web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers; [1] https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspeedinternetaup https://www.xfinity.com/corporate/customers/policies/highspe...
    - nanidin 5y ago
      Google Fiber AUP[0] allows for hosting of anything for non-commercial purposes. Email is allowed as long as the email sent is not "unsolicited bulk commercial email". Time to update that worldview :) Every time we repeat something like "no one allows self hosting", the more people that will hear it and repeat it and make it a self fulfilling prophecy. [0] https://fiber.google.com/legal/accepteduse/residential/ https://fiber.google.com/legal/accepteduse/residential/
      - syshum 5y ago
        > Time to update that worldview :) Why? Google Fiber is Available to less than 1% of US Households. Comcast is the largest Residential ISP last I looked in about 60-70% of US Markets... ATT has the same policy, and I believe most of the other Cable Providers do as well. My guess would be over 90% of Residential Internet Plans today have a policy inline with Comcast not Google Fiber Pointing to an outlier to the norm does not mean i need to update my worldview at all.
        nanidin 5y ago
- rootw0rm 5y ago
  i don't know about that. i've always used leased gigabit connections for my email. this article is about Hetzner specifically, which I've leased tons of servers and additional IPs from. AFAIK you don't know the IP you'll be getting until you pay for it unless things have changed recently.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
I think the parent is perhaps just lucky. A reason given for mail not getting to Microsoft servers was that a server IP controlled by the same hosting company had in the past been on a blacklist. I was happy to move hosts to one that was considered trusted, but there was no way for me to know the IPv4 addresses the company had in the past, never mind if they'd been on a pertinent blacklist at some time. Based on that I think it could work, but there are no guarantees that outside, historical characteristics won't screw things up for you.
exporectomy 5y ago
I use shared hosting and my trick is to only send emails that are more important to the recipient than to myself. In this way, if they don't receive it, they complain and then I resend it from gmail instead.
syshum 5y ago
With Tools like Mail-In-a-Box it is not really the tooling The people that say "I Cant send anything" are likely trying to setup it up on a Residential or "Business" (which is really just a Residential with a slightly better SLA and less overselling) Internet Circuit... Not an Enterprise Internet Circuit Hint: If they are trying to bundle TV Services with your Internet you are not on an Enterprise Line. Even if you buy a dedicated IP from these services they still make is hard to impossible to send email on the circuit
nanidin 5y ago
I think I agree with you (RE: make a comprehensive write-up), but I also seem to remember thinking the same thing when I was setting up the latest iteration of the server and then googling it and finding that such a guide already exists :) Part of the problem is that it's an evolving system and things change over time. Spam is an interesting problem. Assuming one self-hosts and makes their email address publicly available, then one can get a metric for how much spam is flying around. Eventually one will try to stop spam from coming to their inbox, and on doing so one might build a mental model for how the big mail providers combat spam and realize why one's emails are not being delivered. Then one might realize that one is sending mail that one would not willingly receive! And then take action to resolve. In general though, there is some base effort to establish trust, and as long as you don't ruin it by sending spam, then you shouldn't end up on a blacklist. If you find that your IP was on a blacklist before it became yours, then work with the people that are blacklisting - but at that point it does become a bit of a job. I actually ran into an issue in my professional life where an AWS WAF rule started alerting on one of our own servers hosted in AWS because someone had previously used the IP for malware C&C. Anyway - I will think on this and see if I can write something up. It's a good idea. My main concern is that there is a gap between the way I did things (sysadmin style) and the "new" way of doing things (containerized).

MrStonedOne 5y ago

you are confusing spam filtering with blocked emails. The issue people have trying to send mail is with the latter, where the email won't even show up in the spam filters, it will either be blocked by the mail system or silently ignored.

nanidin 5y ago
When mail has gone undelivered due to non-spam reasons, I typically receive a bounce. On my server, when I block a message due to trust, I reject the connection. When I block due to spam, the message is received but goes in the spam folder. I get reports from Google/Microsoft/etc when other people try to send using my domains but their messages fail due to DKIM/SPF failures. I just want to push back against the “it’s impossible to self host email” meme that seems comes around occasionally. Every time I’ve run into an issue there has been a solution.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > On my server, when I block a message due to trust, I reject the connection. Is that how Google/Microsoft/etc. do it too? If not, then your practice really doesn't matter. Most of my friends have an @gmail.com address, so if Google would pretend to accept mail from my hypothetical mail server, but instead just drop it on the floor, that's a non-starter for me hosting my own mail.
  - nanidin 5y ago
    I have never had a problem sending to gmail or Microsoft addresses that didn’t involve at least making it to the spam box. I can’t speak with absolute certainty how every email admin handles things, but I have run into issues sending mail to some domains where I got a bounce and was able to reach out to the admins and get it corrected. Accepting mail for delivery but failing to deliver must be a violation of some RFC or email standard as it makes it impossible to send mail as a non-megacorp. What I would like to get across is that self hosting is not impossible or unacceptably unreliable. If Google and Microsoft have policies that make it difficult to send messages to gmail or hotmail users, that isn’t a reason in and of itself that we should not self host. It’s a reason that we should work with Google/Microsoft to have better policies - but accepting things as they are and writing off self hosting as impossible is eventually accepting control of email by a limited handful of corporations, which I don’t think is a good thing.

nuker 5y ago

> I have self hosted personal mail for over a decade. Maybe thats why it works for you. Try making new one?

nanidin 5y ago
As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the next best time is today. Maybe it is tough to get trusted by the major providers in a short time period today, but if it’s something you’re interested in, don’t let that stop you!

rootw0rm 5y ago

I've also had luck with self-hosted solutions. Gawd, email is a really backwards technology these days isn't it? But...I've also been in the unfortunate position of leasing IPv4 addresses which were already blacklisted by various sources. It's not a terribly easy problem to solve if you need to contact customers NOW without using a 3rd party solution.

hnick 5y ago

I'd imagine personal emails trigger different flags than a bulk newsletter from a small business. One of the key suggestions on setting up a mail server (or even something like Amazon SES) is to 'warm up' by progressively sending more and more emails. Volume and uniqueness are a big part of filters.