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I have been running mailinabox with a hetzner server for 2-3 years now. - Setup was largely painless. Main problem was making sure dns settings at my domain re

I have been running mailinabox with a hetzner server for 2-3 years now. - Setup was largely painless. Main problem was making sure dns settings at my domain registrar were correct. - Almost zero problems with mail delivery on the big providers [1]. Last time my email was dropped was by amd.com. - Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless. Here is my advice to people who are on the threshold of wanting to host their own email, but are unsure because of mail delivery issues. Well, there are zero problems with incoming mail. So setup mailinabox and use that email to register for websites [2]. Use it for all your mailing lists etc. Do it for a few years and see how it feels. Occasionally send out email. If enough people do it, then over time it will become easier for more people to host their own email. [1] I have a theory that I deployed. I asked a whole bunch of people with gmail/hotmail email addresses to send me emails first on my new email. I then replied to them. I think this ensured that from that start I was put on the good lists. [2] Use websitename@yourdomain.come to register. Easy to block spam this way.

jjav 3y ago
> Do it for a few years and see how it feels. A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server. For anyone too young to have known, this is how it used to be. Email was desktop (workstation) to desktop. Even when working at large corporations in the 90s, email arrived and was sent to the world directly from my personal workstation. For anyone worried about deliverability, keep in mind you can outsource the delivery part while still running your own email server for incoming email. I have experimented with using mailjet as an outgoing relay, for low volumes it was (maybe still?) free. I don't use a relay though, I deliver everything directly. But you don't have to if you worry about delivery. Why would you do this? For one thing, as parent post says, it gets you used to running the server. But much more importantly, it gives you complete control of incoming email. Never again is there any chance of google/yahoo/microsoft locking you out of receiving important emails (account resets, bank statements, etc) when you own the receiving server. Over time you can start relaxing the relaying and deliver directly to most places, only keep the relay to those who give you trouble coughmicrosoftcough. Or keep the outgoing relay forever if you prefer, but still reap all the benefits of owning the receiving side which is arguably more important.
_cenw 3y ago
I've done MiaB from 2015-2017, and I've always had deliverability issues from Digital Ocean. Microsoft is particularly nasty, and Gmail kept marking me as spam silently instead of rejecting mail. I've decided to just move on and pay Fastmail. Email isn't private anyway.
- dingdingdang 3y ago
  Same, ran very (technically speaking) clean MiAB setup for local business and after 2 years we had to drop it due to delivery issues with MS business accounts. Invoices missed, etc. - a royal pain in the arse. Only a full migration to gmail biz domain fixed things fully. Email. Yikes.
Arnavion 3y ago
>Last time my email was dropped was by amd.com. They have something weird going on. I had to make an account with them to redeem a game key, and they wouldn't deliver the account verification email to my custom domain hosted by Fastmail. I used a gmail address and the email came instantly. Then out of the blue 24h later the emails to my custom domain were delivered (by which time the verification codes had all expired, of course). I saw a bunch of discussion where other people reported the same thing like https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/yr9tqq/amd_rewards_activation_not_working/k555hh7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/yr9tqq/amd_rewards... - they got emails instantly when they switched to gmail but other domains didn't work.
- oynqr 3y ago
  Maybe it's being greylisted and their server doesn't retry soon enough?
gunapologist99 3y ago
> - Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless. Ran into this too, multiple times. Just not worth it if it breaks the underlying OS.
ajosh 3y ago
My experience has been that MAIB version updates are usually very smooth. Regular OS update (apt update/apt install) are smooth. The big problem is that the recommended path is to install on a fresh system when moving between OS versions. In the most recent release that required that, I actually did an in-place upgrade of the OS by running do-release-upgrade twice and leaving the config files as-is. I followed some steps that were posted on the forum. I ran into one or two minor issues but they were the sorts of things I'd expect to see running an "unsupported" upgrade. Other than the OS updates which just take time to download and install, the total work doing it this unofficial way was maybe a couple of hours. That's necessary every 2-3 years, I think? I do have a few things that I've customized. Updates to MIAB will overwrite them if they're involved in the services it provides. Recently NextCloud updates have been better about removing all of your plugins. The only problem I ever had with it during an update was when the SQLite DB got corrupt. That basically made it so you had to reset NextCloud.
- abdullahkhalids 3y ago
  It's not the hours of work that is problematic (though that should go away too). It is the stress of somehow losing my mail. Of course I have backups, but still I would rather not deal with the hassle of recovering from them. I really wish, we were in a place where such software were designed for NixOS.
  - HumanOstrich 3y ago
    Saying something should just be redesigned for Nix is like saying just rewrite it in Rust. Terrible idea.
jimmaswell 3y ago
It was flat out impossible for me to get Outlook to accept my mail server. They'd only give me some vague response with no actionable steps to resolve it. I gave up and used a gmail account to route everything outgoing. That way mail still shows up as from:jimm@jimm.horse but rides on Google's reputation. Defeats the purpose a little but there's nothing more I can do (apparently unless I buy my own non residential ISP line, host the server in my house, and build reputatiom forever, but that's an absurd length to have to go through. ideally we'd have antitrust legislation forcing MS et al to be fair towards smaller email and save the open internet overall, but I'm not holding my breath.). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691618
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  Damn, that's a cool URL. Had no idea that Bronies were still a thing, or that hardcore about it.
- fuomag9 3y ago
  AWS ses is basically free (literal cents) if you send <1000 emails per month if you want an alternative (this is what I've been using for 2+ years)
  - jimmaswell 3y ago
    Thanks, I'm pretty happy with my setup though. I use my server for lots of other stuff at the same time as email.
  - Grimburger 3y ago
    I've never in years ever been allowed out of their sandbox which restricts it to verified addresses. This doesn't seem to be uncommon.
    - jen_h 3y ago
      When I requested to escape the sandbox, my request was granted in nine hours...admittedly, this was six years ago, but it looks like the process is the same (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production-access.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production...).
graypegg 3y ago
Your [2] note about using website names in emails is an awesome but underrated benefit. I’ve been doing that with hey.com email at the moment. (Using a custom domain, any address that doesn’t have an inbox goes into the “catch all” box. I can upgrade an address to a real one by setting up a free alias address which is pretty simple in their UI.) I’ve only caught one sold email being used for spam so far (sketchy wristwatch store that wanted an email to unlock some discount I never used) but really happy I’ll know about the next one.

jjav 3y ago

> Do it for a few years and see how it feels. A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server. For anyone too young to have known, this is how it used to be. Email was desktop (workstation) to desktop. Even when working at large corporations in the 90s, email arrived and was sent to the world directly from my personal workstation. For anyone worried about deliverability, keep in mind you can outsource the delivery part while still running your own email server for incoming email. I have experimented with using mailjet as an outgoing relay, for low volumes it was (maybe still?) free. I don't use a relay though, I deliver everything directly. But you don't have to if you worry about delivery. Why would you do this? For one thing, as parent post says, it gets you used to running the server. But much more importantly, it gives you complete control of incoming email. Never again is there any chance of google/yahoo/microsoft locking you out of receiving important emails (account resets, bank statements, etc) when you own the receiving server. Over time you can start relaxing the relaying and deliver directly to most places, only keep the relay to those who give you trouble coughmicrosoftcough. Or keep the outgoing relay forever if you prefer, but still reap all the benefits of owning the receiving side which is arguably more important.

_cenw 3y ago

I've done MiaB from 2015-2017, and I've always had deliverability issues from Digital Ocean. Microsoft is particularly nasty, and Gmail kept marking me as spam silently instead of rejecting mail. I've decided to just move on and pay Fastmail. Email isn't private anyway.

dingdingdang 3y ago
Same, ran very (technically speaking) clean MiAB setup for local business and after 2 years we had to drop it due to delivery issues with MS business accounts. Invoices missed, etc. - a royal pain in the arse. Only a full migration to gmail biz domain fixed things fully. Email. Yikes.

Arnavion 3y ago

>Last time my email was dropped was by amd.com. They have something weird going on. I had to make an account with them to redeem a game key, and they wouldn't deliver the account verification email to my custom domain hosted by Fastmail. I used a gmail address and the email came instantly. Then out of the blue 24h later the emails to my custom domain were delivered (by which time the verification codes had all expired, of course). I saw a bunch of discussion where other people reported the same thing like https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/yr9tqq/amd_rewards_activation_not_working/k555hh7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/yr9tqq/amd_rewards... - they got emails instantly when they switched to gmail but other domains didn't work.

oynqr 3y ago
Maybe it's being greylisted and their server doesn't retry soon enough?

gunapologist99 3y ago

> - Last year had to do a major version upgrade to mailinabox and it was a huge hassle. I think they need to improve on this. Rolling updates are painless. Ran into this too, multiple times. Just not worth it if it breaks the underlying OS.

ajosh 3y ago

My experience has been that MAIB version updates are usually very smooth. Regular OS update (apt update/apt install) are smooth. The big problem is that the recommended path is to install on a fresh system when moving between OS versions. In the most recent release that required that, I actually did an in-place upgrade of the OS by running do-release-upgrade twice and leaving the config files as-is. I followed some steps that were posted on the forum. I ran into one or two minor issues but they were the sorts of things I'd expect to see running an "unsupported" upgrade. Other than the OS updates which just take time to download and install, the total work doing it this unofficial way was maybe a couple of hours. That's necessary every 2-3 years, I think? I do have a few things that I've customized. Updates to MIAB will overwrite them if they're involved in the services it provides. Recently NextCloud updates have been better about removing all of your plugins. The only problem I ever had with it during an update was when the SQLite DB got corrupt. That basically made it so you had to reset NextCloud.

abdullahkhalids 3y ago
It's not the hours of work that is problematic (though that should go away too). It is the stress of somehow losing my mail. Of course I have backups, but still I would rather not deal with the hassle of recovering from them. I really wish, we were in a place where such software were designed for NixOS.
- HumanOstrich 3y ago
  Saying something should just be redesigned for Nix is like saying just rewrite it in Rust. Terrible idea.

jimmaswell 3y ago

It was flat out impossible for me to get Outlook to accept my mail server. They'd only give me some vague response with no actionable steps to resolve it. I gave up and used a gmail account to route everything outgoing. That way mail still shows up as from:jimm@jimm.horse but rides on Google's reputation. Defeats the purpose a little but there's nothing more I can do (apparently unless I buy my own non residential ISP line, host the server in my house, and build reputatiom forever, but that's an absurd length to have to go through. ideally we'd have antitrust legislation forcing MS et al to be fair towards smaller email and save the open internet overall, but I'm not holding my breath.). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35691618

AussieWog93 3y ago
Damn, that's a cool URL. Had no idea that Bronies were still a thing, or that hardcore about it.
fuomag9 3y ago
AWS ses is basically free (literal cents) if you send <1000 emails per month if you want an alternative (this is what I've been using for 2+ years)
- jimmaswell 3y ago
  Thanks, I'm pretty happy with my setup though. I use my server for lots of other stuff at the same time as email.
- Grimburger 3y ago
  I've never in years ever been allowed out of their sandbox which restricts it to verified addresses. This doesn't seem to be uncommon.
  - jen_h 3y ago
    When I requested to escape the sandbox, my request was granted in nine hours...admittedly, this was six years ago, but it looks like the process is the same (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production-access.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production...).

graypegg 3y ago

Your [2] note about using website names in emails is an awesome but underrated benefit. I’ve been doing that with hey.com email at the moment. (Using a custom domain, any address that doesn’t have an inbox goes into the “catch all” box. I can upgrade an address to a real one by setting up a free alias address which is pretty simple in their UI.) I’ve only caught one sold email being used for spam so far (sketchy wristwatch store that wanted an email to unlock some discount I never used) but really happy I’ll know about the next one.