4 ms·

As usual in any email thread about email deliverability, the amount of FUD in these comments is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I’m not unusually smart or intel

As usual in any email thread about email deliverability, the amount of FUD in these comments is absolutely mind-boggling to me. I’m not unusually smart or intelligent or capable. I wouldn’t consider myself a deliverability expert. It’s only a small small part of my job. I’ve never worked for any organisation that sells email delivery services to third parties. Why the hell can I understand this stuff, and get it to work, while there are so many people here that very clearly indicate (via what they’re saying in their comments) that they DON’T get it yet have a serious axe to grind? I’m left feeling like homegrown email delivery is some sort of lightning rod for stuck-in-the-past faux-sysadmin types that can’t get past the fact that it’s not 2003 anymore and lazily / maliciously comply with SPF / DKIM. IT’S NOT THAT HARD.

snowwrestler 3y ago
Without knowing everyone’s domains and IPs and history, it’s hard to judge competency in a thread like this. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are important to set up correctly, but doing so is NOT sufficient for good deliverability. In fact it is only a small component of success. Well-established organizations that have a long history of sending steady volumes of high quality content with low complaints have a huge leg up. So if you work at such a place, or you contract with such a vendor, you’re going to feel like it’s obvious that the DNS entries work well.
bongodongobob 3y ago
Yeah it takes like 5 minutes. I have no idea what people are crying about. On a tech site no less. This is entry level have the intern do it stuff.
gruez 3y ago
>As usual in any email thread about email deliverability, the amount of FUD in these comments is absolutely mind-boggling to me. [...] What type of "FUD" are you talking about? The objections in the thread seem pretty well founded (eg. being shadowbanned despite complying with SPD/DKIM, or this requirement breaking email forwarding), and there aren't really any that are against implementing SPF / DKIM.
nh2 3y ago
I agree on the technical part, but: A problem is that you can do everything technically right, and sitll land in spam, because some big players don't play by the usual rules. For example, Microsoft apparently has an allowlist for IPv4 -- or equivalenty, blocks all IPv4 by default, until you manually de-list them at sender.office.com. At least I haven't found an IP yet for which I didn't have to do that (self-hosting email for 15 years). (Imagine every provider did it like MS; you'd be sitting there and filling out web forms with 1000s of providers.) So you have a technically perfect setup and MS stil rejects you. -- That said, using some provider to send emails for you doesn't solve deliverability either. There, many customers share the same sender IP. If one of them sends marketing/spam, the entire IP gets bad reputation. In such cases, providers recommend to upgrade to "bring your own IP", which then needs to "gather reputation" [0]. Great, might as well have self-hosted in the first place, as repuation is the only thing I bought the service for. [0]: Example: https://www.mailgun.com/blog/deliverability/dedicated-shared-ips-which-one-should-you-use/#chapter-4 https://www.mailgun.com/blog/deliverability/dedicated-shared... -- Especially entertaining is "Use a shared IP if: Your shared IP partners have built a good reputation." As if you had any control over that.
- Avamander 3y ago
  > A problem is that you can do everything technically right, and still land in spam, because some big players don't play by the usual rules. That applies to really all email providers. Part of fighting spam is (somewhat unfortunately) not telling the spammer what you're detecting.
Biganon 3y ago
Congratulations for being lucky enough to have big actors accept your e-mails, this is not the case for many of us who do understand and apply SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Guess we'll just try being luckier...?
tschumacher 3y ago
I have the same gripe and in response published the notes to set up my self hosted email on my blog a few months ago [1]. It's really not that hard but yet we constantly see this topic on HN. I understand there are people who've set it up properly and still have their mail end up in spam. Maybe we're just lucky. But there's no need to write long pieces about this going into detail what this tech giant and that tech giant do. All you can do is set up DMARC, DKIM and SPF - that's it. EDIT: Admittedly this post is also about bulk sending where other metrics like unsubscribe links and spaminess matter. But for the self hosted crew it really just comes down to DMARC, DKIM and SPF. [1] https://tschumacher.net/self-host-email/ https://tschumacher.net/self-host-email/
- jeffbee 3y ago
  What I have gleaned from the HN discourse over the years is that the people who are mad about this topic actually are spammers. They want to spam you and they are super pissed off that their little scammy idea isn't working.

snowwrestler 3y ago

Without knowing everyone’s domains and IPs and history, it’s hard to judge competency in a thread like this. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are important to set up correctly, but doing so is NOT sufficient for good deliverability. In fact it is only a small component of success. Well-established organizations that have a long history of sending steady volumes of high quality content with low complaints have a huge leg up. So if you work at such a place, or you contract with such a vendor, you’re going to feel like it’s obvious that the DNS entries work well.

bongodongobob 3y ago

Yeah it takes like 5 minutes. I have no idea what people are crying about. On a tech site no less. This is entry level have the intern do it stuff.

gruez 3y ago

>As usual in any email thread about email deliverability, the amount of FUD in these comments is absolutely mind-boggling to me. [...] What type of "FUD" are you talking about? The objections in the thread seem pretty well founded (eg. being shadowbanned despite complying with SPD/DKIM, or this requirement breaking email forwarding), and there aren't really any that are against implementing SPF / DKIM.

nh2 3y ago

I agree on the technical part, but: A problem is that you can do everything technically right, and sitll land in spam, because some big players don't play by the usual rules. For example, Microsoft apparently has an allowlist for IPv4 -- or equivalenty, blocks all IPv4 by default, until you manually de-list them at sender.office.com. At least I haven't found an IP yet for which I didn't have to do that (self-hosting email for 15 years). (Imagine every provider did it like MS; you'd be sitting there and filling out web forms with 1000s of providers.) So you have a technically perfect setup and MS stil rejects you. -- That said, using some provider to send emails for you doesn't solve deliverability either. There, many customers share the same sender IP. If one of them sends marketing/spam, the entire IP gets bad reputation. In such cases, providers recommend to upgrade to "bring your own IP", which then needs to "gather reputation" [0]. Great, might as well have self-hosted in the first place, as repuation is the only thing I bought the service for. [0]: Example: https://www.mailgun.com/blog/deliverability/dedicated-shared-ips-which-one-should-you-use/#chapter-4 https://www.mailgun.com/blog/deliverability/dedicated-shared... -- Especially entertaining is "Use a shared IP if: Your shared IP partners have built a good reputation." As if you had any control over that.

Avamander 3y ago
> A problem is that you can do everything technically right, and still land in spam, because some big players don't play by the usual rules. That applies to really all email providers. Part of fighting spam is (somewhat unfortunately) not telling the spammer what you're detecting.

Biganon 3y ago

Congratulations for being lucky enough to have big actors accept your e-mails, this is not the case for many of us who do understand and apply SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Guess we'll just try being luckier...?

tschumacher 3y ago

I have the same gripe and in response published the notes to set up my self hosted email on my blog a few months ago [1]. It's really not that hard but yet we constantly see this topic on HN. I understand there are people who've set it up properly and still have their mail end up in spam. Maybe we're just lucky. But there's no need to write long pieces about this going into detail what this tech giant and that tech giant do. All you can do is set up DMARC, DKIM and SPF - that's it. EDIT: Admittedly this post is also about bulk sending where other metrics like unsubscribe links and spaminess matter. But for the self hosted crew it really just comes down to DMARC, DKIM and SPF. [1] https://tschumacher.net/self-host-email/ https://tschumacher.net/self-host-email/

jeffbee 3y ago
What I have gleaned from the HN discourse over the years is that the people who are mad about this topic actually are spammers. They want to spam you and they are super pissed off that their little scammy idea isn't working.