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Happy to see the support for self-hosting mail. I think the fear of self-hosting mail that many people have can be treated simply by trying it on a non-critica

Happy to see the support for self-hosting mail. I think the fear of self-hosting mail that many people have can be treated simply by trying it on a non-critical domain. Yes there are hoops that must be jumped through to ensure reliable delivery, but it's well worth it to gain an understanding of how they all work together.

mindslight 5y ago
It's amazing how much the experiences of mail hosting vary. I've run my own email for decades and have never had the kind of deliverability problems that people seem to go on about. I've had the occasional isolated incident (perhaps like 6 in 20+ years), and if I'm sending a critical business message I often tail the log to make sure it actually goes out. But in general it's been quite straightforward. It's also worth noting that even if deliverability is a problem, that doesn't affect incoming messages! So you can most certainly grab your own domain, create a subdomain for account validation emails, and mitigate the single point of failure for your online life.
- megous 5y ago
  You can probably configure your postfix system to relay outgoing mail for select addresses via your gmail account, to not have to deal with reconfiguring your MUAs if you ever start delivering via your mail server, and not even use a subdomain. Send via gmail, get delivery to your server.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Sure, that's just config work that might not be straightforward. I personally undertake that kind of config work, but I can understand that others don't want to. So I was thinking perhaps a subdomain would be a good way to divide it such that you could use @foo.example.com for accounts, but then host your main @example.com with some professional provider. Especially if that commercial provider wants to charge you per-address etc, and you can do catchall aliasing on the subdomain to tag email by sender. I like seeing who's sold/leaked my address this way.

mindslight 5y ago

It's amazing how much the experiences of mail hosting vary. I've run my own email for decades and have never had the kind of deliverability problems that people seem to go on about. I've had the occasional isolated incident (perhaps like 6 in 20+ years), and if I'm sending a critical business message I often tail the log to make sure it actually goes out. But in general it's been quite straightforward. It's also worth noting that even if deliverability is a problem, that doesn't affect incoming messages! So you can most certainly grab your own domain, create a subdomain for account validation emails, and mitigate the single point of failure for your online life.

megous 5y ago
You can probably configure your postfix system to relay outgoing mail for select addresses via your gmail account, to not have to deal with reconfiguring your MUAs if you ever start delivering via your mail server, and not even use a subdomain. Send via gmail, get delivery to your server.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Sure, that's just config work that might not be straightforward. I personally undertake that kind of config work, but I can understand that others don't want to. So I was thinking perhaps a subdomain would be a good way to divide it such that you could use @foo.example.com for accounts, but then host your main @example.com with some professional provider. Especially if that commercial provider wants to charge you per-address etc, and you can do catchall aliasing on the subdomain to tag email by sender. I like seeing who's sold/leaked my address this way.