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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 wi

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.
    - oblib 5y ago
      >What ISP should someone choose? What matters most is if the IP address they issue you has been blacklisted for spamming. DigitalOcean is fine but you need to check the IP address before you do the work of building a mail server. Some of their IPs are on a lot of blacklists. If it's only on a very few you need to look into who's blacklisting it. There are some that offer a way to get delisted and make it easy, there are others that block pretty much every IP address DigitalOcean has (or large ranges of them) and they won't de-list anything within them. Many of those blacklists are managed overseas and not used much in the U.S. No matter the ISP you should check the IP address they issue for a VPS before you build the email server.
- peteri 5y ago
  Yeah, I have that problem with gmail, I had a test account with a weak password get exploited a few years ago. Now for any new gmail address I want to send to seems to endup in spam. The problem here is there is no getting out of jail easily for low volume email users. My personal gmail account is full of spam and emails I do want from email lists end up the spam folder randomly.
cm2187 5y ago
In my case x>10y for a personal server, but that reputation got ruined when some test email account I had created with a weak password and forgotten, got breached and some spammers started sending spam. My mail server (smartermail) notified me within an hour of the abnormal number of emails and I disabled the account immediately. But that was it for the reputation of that IP. Fortunately I could switch to a spare, clean IP. That being said, now I monitor and auto-ban failed authentication attempts to smtp/imap (among others) and running the service is fairly low maintenance. But the morale of the story is that you are only one weak password from one of your users away from your mail server getting blacklisted as a spam server. So while I think it is fairly easy to run a personal server, running one for a small organisation is another matter.
- behringer 5y ago
  i use a very low sending limit in my mail server. If a user were to send out spam, it would end up being relatively few by the time i noticed.
oblib 5y ago
I've been running my own email server for around 7-8 years and just setup a new email server on a DigitalOcean vps earlier this year using "Mail-in-a-Box". That's about as easy as it gets but it still requires some work and you need to check the IP address DigitalOcean issues to see if it's blacklisted before you set it up. Google makes it easy to get whitelisted. Microsoft email services (Hotmail/Outlook) are a pain though. I tried to get through their process but got nowhere. Other services I had to submit a request to get de-listed. So it does take awhile to go through all that. Still, I prefer that to hitching that wagon to a 3rd party provider like Google, or any other. Before I set mine up the 1st time I'd been screwed a few times by 3rd party providers. The last one, I can't recall which, but it was either "MailChimp" or whomever bought them, that I'd configured an app to use and almost as soon as I'd released it they announce they'd been acquired and I would have to use the new services APIs, and of course they cost more, and their services were geared towards mass mailing, and that's not what my apps do, and their API sucked for my needs. It was about 12 years of dealing with 3rd party bullshit that motivated me to set up my own email server. If you just want to fiddle around with one to get a feel for it Mail-in-a-Box is a good place to get started: https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/

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.
  - oblib 5y ago
    >What ISP should someone choose? What matters most is if the IP address they issue you has been blacklisted for spamming. DigitalOcean is fine but you need to check the IP address before you do the work of building a mail server. Some of their IPs are on a lot of blacklists. If it's only on a very few you need to look into who's blacklisting it. There are some that offer a way to get delisted and make it easy, there are others that block pretty much every IP address DigitalOcean has (or large ranges of them) and they won't de-list anything within them. Many of those blacklists are managed overseas and not used much in the U.S. No matter the ISP you should check the IP address they issue for a VPS before you build the email server.
peteri 5y ago
Yeah, I have that problem with gmail, I had a test account with a weak password get exploited a few years ago. Now for any new gmail address I want to send to seems to endup in spam. The problem here is there is no getting out of jail easily for low volume email users. My personal gmail account is full of spam and emails I do want from email lists end up the spam folder randomly.

cm2187 5y ago

In my case x>10y for a personal server, but that reputation got ruined when some test email account I had created with a weak password and forgotten, got breached and some spammers started sending spam. My mail server (smartermail) notified me within an hour of the abnormal number of emails and I disabled the account immediately. But that was it for the reputation of that IP. Fortunately I could switch to a spare, clean IP. That being said, now I monitor and auto-ban failed authentication attempts to smtp/imap (among others) and running the service is fairly low maintenance. But the morale of the story is that you are only one weak password from one of your users away from your mail server getting blacklisted as a spam server. So while I think it is fairly easy to run a personal server, running one for a small organisation is another matter.

behringer 5y ago
i use a very low sending limit in my mail server. If a user were to send out spam, it would end up being relatively few by the time i noticed.

oblib 5y ago

I've been running my own email server for around 7-8 years and just setup a new email server on a DigitalOcean vps earlier this year using "Mail-in-a-Box". That's about as easy as it gets but it still requires some work and you need to check the IP address DigitalOcean issues to see if it's blacklisted before you set it up. Google makes it easy to get whitelisted. Microsoft email services (Hotmail/Outlook) are a pain though. I tried to get through their process but got nowhere. Other services I had to submit a request to get de-listed. So it does take awhile to go through all that. Still, I prefer that to hitching that wagon to a 3rd party provider like Google, or any other. Before I set mine up the 1st time I'd been screwed a few times by 3rd party providers. The last one, I can't recall which, but it was either "MailChimp" or whomever bought them, that I'd configured an app to use and almost as soon as I'd released it they announce they'd been acquired and I would have to use the new services APIs, and of course they cost more, and their services were geared towards mass mailing, and that's not what my apps do, and their API sucked for my needs. It was about 12 years of dealing with 3rd party bullshit that motivated me to set up my own email server. If you just want to fiddle around with one to get a feel for it Mail-in-a-Box is a good place to get started: https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/