5 ms·

I run my own mail server. Friends & family, so outbound volume is super low, like 2-3 digits/day, not enough to get a rep. Deliverability was always hard to one

I run my own mail server. Friends & family, so outbound volume is super low, like 2-3 digits/day, not enough to get a rep. Deliverability was always hard to one of the major providers until I happened to make the right connection on HN to someone who worked there, and she graciously opened an internal ticket, asked some questions about the subnet my server was on, and it's been fine ever since. Setting aside the fairness of how I got my deliverability problem solved, this now makes me really reluctant to move IPs. :-/ Any tips on IPs where people are seeing excellent deliverability? I'd like to avoid routing my outbound email through one of the email providers (Mailgun, SES, etc) if I can.

lazyweb 5y ago
> Any tips on IPs where people are seeing excellent deliverability? I'd like to avoid routing my outbound email through one of the email providers (Mailgun, SES, etc) if I can. I've moved my domain / mailserver a few times between Hetzner IPs when migrating to new servers. Went smoothly, but I make sure to check the new IP with common greylists before moving my mail setup. Other than that, make sure your DNS setup is clean and use Hetzner :) But I'm sure you have your own strategies.
- callesgg 5y ago
  If you buy your own ip range you will be fine. I used to work at a company who owned 128 address and the mail server was one one of them. A Whois lookup of the mail server IP gave my old boss as a contact person. Not just some random ISP. We did not setup DKIM until maybe 2014 and that was not really necessary from a outgoing mail perspective cause we never got emails bounced.
  - Scramblejams 5y ago
    I don't need many IPs, any tips on what it takes to own a /29 and how to go about buying it?
    - sneak 5y ago
      I don't believe PI space comes in anything smaller than /24.
      - Scramblejams 5y ago
        Then, given what I've read about how tight IPv4 supply is these days, I conclude I probably can't afford it. :-)
        NicoJuicy 5y ago
        I believe you will like this then: How to acquire 1,024 public IPv4 addresses which are worth $60K for $500 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29844651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29844651
        Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        There are places to buy smaller ranges. Free Range Cloud lets you buy a static IP tunnel or lets you buy a /29 through them. The problem with smaller ranges is that you can't actually advertise them through BGP the way you would with a /24. https://hoppy.network/ https://hoppy.network/ also gives you a unique /32 v4 and /128 v6 if you'd like.
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    That requires colo, I think? So more work for self-hosting and maybe expensive.
- whartung 5y ago
  We've seen lots of articles about the technical details of setting up a mail server (software to use, how to configure it, etc.) Can you suggest any article that talk about "checking common greylists" and other steps admins should take when their email is failing? One of my tenets is that it's fairly easy to learn to do anything, but expertise comes from knowing how to fix things when they go wrong, which is harder to come by. I can see how to setup the email server, but the stuff you're talking about is just dead goat voodoo.
oneplane 5y ago
This has been a very hard problem to solve, mostly because of the ways in which delivery problems have to be solved (support mailboxes, abuse portals etc.) where unless you are 'big' you are not going to get the priority needed to get delivery back on track in a reasonable time at reasonable scale. Very annoying situation to be in.
Melatonic 5y ago
Use a service like NoIP. You choose a hostname and off you go!
- tedunangst 5y ago
  Yeah, don't think that's going to help.
collegeburner 5y ago
Can anybody recommend a hosting/VPS provider who does very careful monitoring of ip space and has strict vetting to avoid bad reputation? I have similar issues, though no magical connected person, so maybe helpful to move to somebody who does this.
- yls 5y ago
  Very happy using Vultr for an OpenBSD based mail stack. They unlock port 25 on demand if you have a valid use case.
- u2077 5y ago
  Check out https://mxroute.com https://mxroute.com Someone mentioned them on HN a while back and said the service works really well. Note that I have not used this service myself.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  If anyone's looking to distinguish themselves in the hosting/VPS space, I'd pay extra for a provider who verifies the personal identity of the server operator before allowing outbound email traffic. Make me jump through some hoops and pay some more, I'm game!
  - collegeburner 5y ago
    Exactly, this is what I was hoping for. Somebody who is very serious about keeping IPs clean.
- lstodd 5y ago
  I host at Hetzner for what, ten or so years. Never had a problem apart from some US idiots blocking access to their sites from EU because GDPR. (I run my personal VPN through it too). The amount of spam coming in (exim4+dovecot, no filters) is comparable to gmail.
martyvis 5y ago
Not wanting to sound all bleak, but what's the continuity plan in the event you are unable to administrate the domain at no notice? Presumably friends and family at least have some alternate cloud email?
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  One of my motivations to move it is to make it easier for someone else to take over in such an event.
- jjav 5y ago
  > Presumably friends and family at least have some alternate cloud email? Not necessary, which is part of the flexibility. I've been myfirstname@mylastname.com since the mid 90s. Initially I hosted it at a desktop at work (things were different back then). Then it's been hosted by a couple ISPs, and then I've been running my own email infrastructure for the last ~decade. If I ever decide not to, it's easy to seamlessly transition to third-party hosting, but it'll always be the same email address/domain.
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
I run a mail server on Digital Ocean and I’ve never had deliverability issues with the big email providers. I had issues once with a self-hosted exchange server and with one of the ISP-provided email addresses.
- eps 5y ago
  You got lucky. Digital Ocean has very lax anti-spam policies, so chunks of their IP space routinely end up on various block/blacklists. Saying as someone's forced to deal with all the spam spilling from DO on daily basis.

lazyweb 5y ago

> Any tips on IPs where people are seeing excellent deliverability? I'd like to avoid routing my outbound email through one of the email providers (Mailgun, SES, etc) if I can. I've moved my domain / mailserver a few times between Hetzner IPs when migrating to new servers. Went smoothly, but I make sure to check the new IP with common greylists before moving my mail setup. Other than that, make sure your DNS setup is clean and use Hetzner :) But I'm sure you have your own strategies.

callesgg 5y ago
If you buy your own ip range you will be fine. I used to work at a company who owned 128 address and the mail server was one one of them. A Whois lookup of the mail server IP gave my old boss as a contact person. Not just some random ISP. We did not setup DKIM until maybe 2014 and that was not really necessary from a outgoing mail perspective cause we never got emails bounced.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  I don't need many IPs, any tips on what it takes to own a /29 and how to go about buying it?
  - sneak 5y ago
    I don't believe PI space comes in anything smaller than /24.
    - Scramblejams 5y ago
      Then, given what I've read about how tight IPv4 supply is these days, I conclude I probably can't afford it. :-)
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        I believe you will like this then: How to acquire 1,024 public IPv4 addresses which are worth $60K for $500 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29844651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29844651
      - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        There are places to buy smaller ranges. Free Range Cloud lets you buy a static IP tunnel or lets you buy a /29 through them. The problem with smaller ranges is that you can't actually advertise them through BGP the way you would with a /24. https://hoppy.network/ https://hoppy.network/ also gives you a unique /32 v4 and /128 v6 if you'd like.
- collegeburner 5y ago
  That requires colo, I think? So more work for self-hosting and maybe expensive.
whartung 5y ago
We've seen lots of articles about the technical details of setting up a mail server (software to use, how to configure it, etc.) Can you suggest any article that talk about "checking common greylists" and other steps admins should take when their email is failing? One of my tenets is that it's fairly easy to learn to do anything, but expertise comes from knowing how to fix things when they go wrong, which is harder to come by. I can see how to setup the email server, but the stuff you're talking about is just dead goat voodoo.

oneplane 5y ago

This has been a very hard problem to solve, mostly because of the ways in which delivery problems have to be solved (support mailboxes, abuse portals etc.) where unless you are 'big' you are not going to get the priority needed to get delivery back on track in a reasonable time at reasonable scale. Very annoying situation to be in.

Melatonic 5y ago

Use a service like NoIP. You choose a hostname and off you go!

tedunangst 5y ago
Yeah, don't think that's going to help.

collegeburner 5y ago

Can anybody recommend a hosting/VPS provider who does very careful monitoring of ip space and has strict vetting to avoid bad reputation? I have similar issues, though no magical connected person, so maybe helpful to move to somebody who does this.

yls 5y ago
Very happy using Vultr for an OpenBSD based mail stack. They unlock port 25 on demand if you have a valid use case.
u2077 5y ago
Check out https://mxroute.com https://mxroute.com Someone mentioned them on HN a while back and said the service works really well. Note that I have not used this service myself.
Scramblejams 5y ago
If anyone's looking to distinguish themselves in the hosting/VPS space, I'd pay extra for a provider who verifies the personal identity of the server operator before allowing outbound email traffic. Make me jump through some hoops and pay some more, I'm game!
- collegeburner 5y ago
  Exactly, this is what I was hoping for. Somebody who is very serious about keeping IPs clean.
lstodd 5y ago
I host at Hetzner for what, ten or so years. Never had a problem apart from some US idiots blocking access to their sites from EU because GDPR. (I run my personal VPN through it too). The amount of spam coming in (exim4+dovecot, no filters) is comparable to gmail.

martyvis 5y ago

Not wanting to sound all bleak, but what's the continuity plan in the event you are unable to administrate the domain at no notice? Presumably friends and family at least have some alternate cloud email?

Scramblejams 5y ago
One of my motivations to move it is to make it easier for someone else to take over in such an event.
jjav 5y ago
> Presumably friends and family at least have some alternate cloud email? Not necessary, which is part of the flexibility. I've been myfirstname@mylastname.com since the mid 90s. Initially I hosted it at a desktop at work (things were different back then). Then it's been hosted by a couple ISPs, and then I've been running my own email infrastructure for the last ~decade. If I ever decide not to, it's easy to seamlessly transition to third-party hosting, but it'll always be the same email address/domain.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

I run a mail server on Digital Ocean and I’ve never had deliverability issues with the big email providers. I had issues once with a self-hosted exchange server and with one of the ISP-provided email addresses.

eps 5y ago
You got lucky. Digital Ocean has very lax anti-spam policies, so chunks of their IP space routinely end up on various block/blacklists. Saying as someone's forced to deal with all the spam spilling from DO on daily basis.