4 ms·

The big thing is that you're presumably already established, which means your IP/ASN is clean and "warm". I self hosted for several years and gave up because e

The big thing is that you're presumably already established, which means your IP/ASN is clean and "warm". I self hosted for several years and gave up because even with a clean ASN, I simply wasn't sending enough emails to keep my reputation score high enough, and so deliverability into the big players (Microsoft in particular) was very spotty. Email isn't that hard it's just laborious to administrate.

alchemist1e9 2y ago
> I simply wasn't sending enough emails to keep my reputation score high enough I’ve used a smaller hosting company for over 25 years run by a competent admin and it’s now dying a slow death I believe exactly because of this reputation problem from infrequent outbound emails from my domain. I don’t know what to do tbh because putting my fate in big tech seems super dangerous. Anyway, everyone is worried about spam but the real problem is sending and having people at outlook.com and gmail.com actually receive your emails!
- speakspokespok 2y ago
  I tried hosting my own email server again earlier in the year. I’d forgotten the process so when googling around I found numerous YouTube videos of spammers doing this themselves … Get a clean IP and start long form email threads between this new domain and personal Gmail / outlook accounts: checking ‘this is not spam’, and coherent responses. They also mention getting DKIm and SPF working. The need for separate caldav , and all the major cloud providers blocking port 25 bummed me out.
- tolciho 2y ago
  Even more amusing is when half your customers are in Gmail, the other half in Exchange, and Gmail and Exchange are having some snit so the emails ain't happening. You call up Microsoft and they want you to reboot (??) or login to some windows account (??), and good luck getting someone from Google on the line. Fear not, for outsourced email saves money, and increases productivity, or anyways something like that, and if you have sufficient faith those big old corporations will fix things, eventually, maybe. I, for one, welcome our new AOL overlords.
- stackghost 2y ago
  I've long been convinced that Big Tech wants email to go away because it's neither fashionable nor particularly profitable. Gmail was famously somebody's "10% project", after all, and not a real product initiative. Now that the era of free money appears to be over I'd not be surprised if I was reading a blog post about an "incredible journey" at Gmail within the decade. While I think that everyone hosting their own email is the ideal, it's not really feasible on today's Internet. I content myself with fastmail. They're big enough I'm not worried about them dying any time soon.
petee 2y ago
I have no explanation for it, but I also run a tiny mail server and I'm always fascinated that despite extremely low volume I still manage to get through without being flagged or blocked. Best I can guess is that my host's netblock just happens to be sparkling clean, but it sounds like even that may not be enough anymore
- bandrami 2y ago
  Similar story here; my only guess (which I don't want to verify in case it jinxes it) is that I've been on the same name and netblock for an extremely long time (~20 years) and so I'm grandfathered in to a lot of undocumented IP rules at the big houses. Long may it continue.
  - petee 2y ago
    Hm, perhaps they do have a longer timeline, I've had my domain and one of the IPs for over 10 years

alchemist1e9 2y ago

> I simply wasn't sending enough emails to keep my reputation score high enough I’ve used a smaller hosting company for over 25 years run by a competent admin and it’s now dying a slow death I believe exactly because of this reputation problem from infrequent outbound emails from my domain. I don’t know what to do tbh because putting my fate in big tech seems super dangerous. Anyway, everyone is worried about spam but the real problem is sending and having people at outlook.com and gmail.com actually receive your emails!

speakspokespok 2y ago
I tried hosting my own email server again earlier in the year. I’d forgotten the process so when googling around I found numerous YouTube videos of spammers doing this themselves … Get a clean IP and start long form email threads between this new domain and personal Gmail / outlook accounts: checking ‘this is not spam’, and coherent responses. They also mention getting DKIm and SPF working. The need for separate caldav , and all the major cloud providers blocking port 25 bummed me out.
tolciho 2y ago
Even more amusing is when half your customers are in Gmail, the other half in Exchange, and Gmail and Exchange are having some snit so the emails ain't happening. You call up Microsoft and they want you to reboot (??) or login to some windows account (??), and good luck getting someone from Google on the line. Fear not, for outsourced email saves money, and increases productivity, or anyways something like that, and if you have sufficient faith those big old corporations will fix things, eventually, maybe. I, for one, welcome our new AOL overlords.
stackghost 2y ago
I've long been convinced that Big Tech wants email to go away because it's neither fashionable nor particularly profitable. Gmail was famously somebody's "10% project", after all, and not a real product initiative. Now that the era of free money appears to be over I'd not be surprised if I was reading a blog post about an "incredible journey" at Gmail within the decade. While I think that everyone hosting their own email is the ideal, it's not really feasible on today's Internet. I content myself with fastmail. They're big enough I'm not worried about them dying any time soon.

petee 2y ago

I have no explanation for it, but I also run a tiny mail server and I'm always fascinated that despite extremely low volume I still manage to get through without being flagged or blocked. Best I can guess is that my host's netblock just happens to be sparkling clean, but it sounds like even that may not be enough anymore

bandrami 2y ago
Similar story here; my only guess (which I don't want to verify in case it jinxes it) is that I've been on the same name and netblock for an extremely long time (~20 years) and so I'm grandfathered in to a lot of undocumented IP rules at the big houses. Long may it continue.
- petee 2y ago
  Hm, perhaps they do have a longer timeline, I've had my domain and one of the IPs for over 10 years