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> If you put some decent effort [...] it works Well, I put in more than some decent effort, and I didn't get it "to work". I detailed my efforts here: https:/

> If you put some decent effort [...] it works Well, I put in more than some decent effort, and I didn't get it "to work". I detailed my efforts here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-server/ https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-ser... Please stop spreading falsehoods. If you were able to somehow get your own email server to deliver email to Gmail and Outlook, great, good for you - but stop pretending that anybody can do it.

jjav 5y ago
> but stop pretending that anybody can do it I do it as well and apparently so do many others. Not sure why it seems problematic for some, but it hasn't been an issue at all for me.
jacquesm 5y ago
And even if you did get it to work there is absolutely no guarantee that they won't block you tomorrow morning for no reason at all.
deng 5y ago
> If you were able to somehow get your own email server to deliver email to Gmail and Outlook, great, good for you - but stop pretending that anybody can do it. Yes, that's probably true. I've been running my own server for 20 years now, and I guess that in itself helps with getting my mail delivered (apart from t-online, but who cares about them). At some time I also hosted some mailing lists, but I quickly abandoned that because that's a surefire way to get your IP blacklisted sooner or later. If you set up a completely new mail server, there probably is a lot of luck involved, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, at least not for your critical business mails. I pretty much keep doing it only out of nostalgia, it doesn't really make any sense otherwise.
- ftrobro 5y ago
  Haha I have the same experience... I have given up trying to send emails to t-online, but every other email-provider accept emails from the server I manage. It sends a few thousand emails per day. A few years ago we had problems, but then I realized some of the emails sent from our servers had non-ascii characters in headers (subject, from, to) which caused email-providers to distrust our server. Using encoded-words syntax ("=?UTF-8?B?" + BASE64(text) + "?=") fixed that problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Encoded-Word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Encoded-Word
sam_lowry_ 5y ago
I did run my own email server for 20+ years. As you may imagine, I had to learn a thing or two about DMARC, DKIM and SPF, but spread over the years it is not a big investment to make. Most of the time, delivery problems were of my own creation. Like running out of disk space or accidentally disabling TLS. Once in a while, Microsoft would start swallowing emails or Google would push everyone to use DMARC. But overall, the experience has been very pleasant. I host my mails, I own my data. I am not shy of using Google, but my work is not defined by their whims. When Google tells me I ran out of space in my account I just delete stuff because I have copies of everything outside of Google infrastructure.
mehdix 5y ago
My little server on Hetzner is delivering to gmail and outlook since two years with no hiccups: postfix,dovecot,rspamd.
ireflect 5y ago
My mail server running on DigitalOcean has been relatively trouble free over the last 9 years. It runs docker-mailserver and is used by me and a dozen employees of my various small businesses. It requires some effort to maintain and understand, and I’ve had a few deliverability issues over the years but they are generally with niche providers. I’ve never had trouble sending mail to the big providers. Every time I read comments about the impracticality of self-hosted email, I scratch my head. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
- fapjacks 5y ago
  That's what I've been using for some years and it's never been a problem for me. You are right that you have to have at least a basic understanding of how a mail server works, and there is some configuration to know about. But I think of all the things I host myself, docker-mailserver is the least cumbersome and among the most reliable.
- dqv 5y ago
  I think DO is really good about policing their IP space. When I signed up for the Microsoft JMRP [0], DO was already a contact of record for the IP I was using. I just appended myself to the list to get any abuse reports as well. >Every time I read comments about the impracticality of self-hosted email, I scratch my head. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. I feel the same. I've had one or two hiccups but smooth sailing for the most part. I'm also happy to provide receipts that show how the recipient's mail server is responding when I send the emails. It's a powerful tool to say, "your mail provider is misbehaving, look!" They will wonder how many people tried to send them email that didn't get to them. [0]: https://postmaster.live.com/snds/JMRP.aspx https://postmaster.live.com/snds/JMRP.aspx
IncRnd 5y ago
I setup and have been running an email server for around 20 domains for over a decade. There have been no issues delivering to Gmail or Outlook, AOL, or Hotmail. There was some work I did initiallity to remove our IP addresses from blackhole lists, which had resulted from whatever the prior owners of the addresses had done. That was, however, minor and didn't take much time. Similarly, setting up DKIM, SPF, and the like were necessary and ugly to do, but they didn't take much time.
throwaway27727 5y ago
Lots of sister comments here saying that they've been running a mail server for X amount of years, where X is a rather large number. That will obviously come with some reputation for your mail server, reducing the curve of being classified as down. I would be interested in hearing from someone who tried to setup a new mail server in the last 1-2 years who was able to run it without a hitch.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  According to AWS, most mail servers will not even count statistics for low-volume senders. If that is true, then it won't matter whether your personal email server has been up for 20 years or 1 year, it won't have any reputation.
  - zbuf 5y ago
    This matches my exprience. I switched recently after 10+ years, and was cautious that this might be a problem but it hasn't been at all. I think it has more to do with the choice of ISP.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      I think they meant servers with no reputation are punished. Other comments said so at least. What ISP should someone choose?
      - zbuf 5y ago
        Interesting, I misinterpreted what was being said! I'm doubtful a default block would work, as that would even penalise the 'big boys' of email when they make basic network changes and piss off existing customers of both sender and receiver... Its easier and logical to conclude something without reputation yet is therefore sending too few mails to be useful to a spammer. I've had good experiences with smaller ISPs (currently Mythic Beasts). In contrast, OVH was a poor experience. I find that reputation (beyond the known "block-lists") appears more likely being tracked for the whole AS number, therefore a lot more to do with your "neighbours" than anything else.
eps 5y ago
Easy on generalizations, mate. I've been running my own mail server since mid '00s. Initially hosted with one of West coast Canadian colos and subsequently moved to an EU colo. Had some deliverability issues with Outlook and Yahoo, but these were episodic and rare even though I set up DKIM only last year and have been running with just SPF and DNS/PTR before that. I know at least a dozen of others with similar setups and timelines. But we all use dedicated colo'ed boxes on IPs from clean netblocks that weren't previously used for shared hosting. I strongly suspect that attempting to run a mailserver on Digital Ocean, OVH, 1and1 and similar mass-hosting providers will not go well. Just like it will be an uphill battle to run it on a residental IP.
- jjav 5y ago
  > I strongly suspect that attempting to run a mailserver on Digital Ocean, OVH, 1and1 and similar mass-hosting providers will not go well. I run my mail server on Linode, no issues at all.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  > Easy on generalizations, mate What did I generalize, exactly? Parent poster was claiming that anybody can set up a mail server with good deliverability - that's a generalization. I said good for them (acknowledging they managed to make it work) and said that I also tried and couldn't make it work - therefore, clearly not everybody can make it work. Did I not argue against generalization there?

jjav 5y ago

> but stop pretending that anybody can do it I do it as well and apparently so do many others. Not sure why it seems problematic for some, but it hasn't been an issue at all for me.

jacquesm 5y ago

And even if you did get it to work there is absolutely no guarantee that they won't block you tomorrow morning for no reason at all.

deng 5y ago

> If you were able to somehow get your own email server to deliver email to Gmail and Outlook, great, good for you - but stop pretending that anybody can do it. Yes, that's probably true. I've been running my own server for 20 years now, and I guess that in itself helps with getting my mail delivered (apart from t-online, but who cares about them). At some time I also hosted some mailing lists, but I quickly abandoned that because that's a surefire way to get your IP blacklisted sooner or later. If you set up a completely new mail server, there probably is a lot of luck involved, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, at least not for your critical business mails. I pretty much keep doing it only out of nostalgia, it doesn't really make any sense otherwise.

ftrobro 5y ago
Haha I have the same experience... I have given up trying to send emails to t-online, but every other email-provider accept emails from the server I manage. It sends a few thousand emails per day. A few years ago we had problems, but then I realized some of the emails sent from our servers had non-ascii characters in headers (subject, from, to) which caused email-providers to distrust our server. Using encoded-words syntax ("=?UTF-8?B?" + BASE64(text) + "?=") fixed that problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Encoded-Word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME#Encoded-Word

sam_lowry_ 5y ago

I did run my own email server for 20+ years. As you may imagine, I had to learn a thing or two about DMARC, DKIM and SPF, but spread over the years it is not a big investment to make. Most of the time, delivery problems were of my own creation. Like running out of disk space or accidentally disabling TLS. Once in a while, Microsoft would start swallowing emails or Google would push everyone to use DMARC. But overall, the experience has been very pleasant. I host my mails, I own my data. I am not shy of using Google, but my work is not defined by their whims. When Google tells me I ran out of space in my account I just delete stuff because I have copies of everything outside of Google infrastructure.

mehdix 5y ago

My little server on Hetzner is delivering to gmail and outlook since two years with no hiccups: postfix,dovecot,rspamd.

ireflect 5y ago

My mail server running on DigitalOcean has been relatively trouble free over the last 9 years. It runs docker-mailserver and is used by me and a dozen employees of my various small businesses. It requires some effort to maintain and understand, and I’ve had a few deliverability issues over the years but they are generally with niche providers. I’ve never had trouble sending mail to the big providers. Every time I read comments about the impracticality of self-hosted email, I scratch my head. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

fapjacks 5y ago
That's what I've been using for some years and it's never been a problem for me. You are right that you have to have at least a basic understanding of how a mail server works, and there is some configuration to know about. But I think of all the things I host myself, docker-mailserver is the least cumbersome and among the most reliable.
dqv 5y ago
I think DO is really good about policing their IP space. When I signed up for the Microsoft JMRP [0], DO was already a contact of record for the IP I was using. I just appended myself to the list to get any abuse reports as well. >Every time I read comments about the impracticality of self-hosted email, I scratch my head. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. I feel the same. I've had one or two hiccups but smooth sailing for the most part. I'm also happy to provide receipts that show how the recipient's mail server is responding when I send the emails. It's a powerful tool to say, "your mail provider is misbehaving, look!" They will wonder how many people tried to send them email that didn't get to them. [0]: https://postmaster.live.com/snds/JMRP.aspx https://postmaster.live.com/snds/JMRP.aspx

IncRnd 5y ago

I setup and have been running an email server for around 20 domains for over a decade. There have been no issues delivering to Gmail or Outlook, AOL, or Hotmail. There was some work I did initiallity to remove our IP addresses from blackhole lists, which had resulted from whatever the prior owners of the addresses had done. That was, however, minor and didn't take much time. Similarly, setting up DKIM, SPF, and the like were necessary and ugly to do, but they didn't take much time.

throwaway27727 5y ago

Lots of sister comments here saying that they've been running a mail server for X amount of years, where X is a rather large number. That will obviously come with some reputation for your mail server, reducing the curve of being classified as down. I would be interested in hearing from someone who tried to setup a new mail server in the last 1-2 years who was able to run it without a hitch.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago
According to AWS, most mail servers will not even count statistics for low-volume senders. If that is true, then it won't matter whether your personal email server has been up for 20 years or 1 year, it won't have any reputation.
- zbuf 5y ago
  This matches my exprience. I switched recently after 10+ years, and was cautious that this might be a problem but it hasn't been at all. I think it has more to do with the choice of ISP.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    I think they meant servers with no reputation are punished. Other comments said so at least. What ISP should someone choose?
    - zbuf 5y ago
      Interesting, I misinterpreted what was being said! I'm doubtful a default block would work, as that would even penalise the 'big boys' of email when they make basic network changes and piss off existing customers of both sender and receiver... Its easier and logical to conclude something without reputation yet is therefore sending too few mails to be useful to a spammer. I've had good experiences with smaller ISPs (currently Mythic Beasts). In contrast, OVH was a poor experience. I find that reputation (beyond the known "block-lists") appears more likely being tracked for the whole AS number, therefore a lot more to do with your "neighbours" than anything else.

eps 5y ago

Easy on generalizations, mate. I've been running my own mail server since mid '00s. Initially hosted with one of West coast Canadian colos and subsequently moved to an EU colo. Had some deliverability issues with Outlook and Yahoo, but these were episodic and rare even though I set up DKIM only last year and have been running with just SPF and DNS/PTR before that. I know at least a dozen of others with similar setups and timelines. But we all use dedicated colo'ed boxes on IPs from clean netblocks that weren't previously used for shared hosting. I strongly suspect that attempting to run a mailserver on Digital Ocean, OVH, 1and1 and similar mass-hosting providers will not go well. Just like it will be an uphill battle to run it on a residental IP.

jjav 5y ago
> I strongly suspect that attempting to run a mailserver on Digital Ocean, OVH, 1and1 and similar mass-hosting providers will not go well. I run my mail server on Linode, no issues at all.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
> Easy on generalizations, mate What did I generalize, exactly? Parent poster was claiming that anybody can set up a mail server with good deliverability - that's a generalization. I said good for them (acknowledging they managed to make it work) and said that I also tried and couldn't make it work - therefore, clearly not everybody can make it work. Did I not argue against generalization there?