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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 b

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
        Regardless, “every one I have ever read” is no longer true. “Almost every one I have read”, perhaps? I looked for market share info on Google Fiber but was unable to find it. Mind sharing your source?
- 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).

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
        Regardless, “every one I have ever read” is no longer true. “Almost every one I have read”, perhaps? I looked for market share info on Google Fiber but was unable to find it. Mind sharing your source?
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).