4 ms·

I'm not sure what Dreamhost's e-mail offering is like, but I chose FastMail over running my own e-mail server because I'm not enough of a sysadmin to be confide

by pluma 12y ago

I'm not sure what Dreamhost's e-mail offering is like, but I chose FastMail over running my own e-mail server because I'm not enough of a sysadmin to be confident in setting up and maintaining my own e-mail server without opening it up to abuse (there are enough involuntary spam relays already). When I compared the major e-mail providers at the time, FastMail won because it was the closest to running your own server in terms of configurability (but much easier), it provided a great web UI (not as important for me personally, but some people don't use native clients), it was somewhat open about its technical infrastructure and it was doing one thing and one thing only (i.e. providing e-mail/calendar/contacts services).

e12e 12y ago
Actually, with any reasonable smtp server, the defaults these days are pretty good -- so email abuse/open relay isn't the problem it once was. The hurdle (if any) these days is making sure email you send isn't flagged as spam, and to a lesser extent to avoid receiving spam (I say lesser, but then I've been running greylisting from day one, which is a minor nuisance, in and off itself). That said, using a good service (like fastmail) vs running your own will always be a trade-off -- and it's perfectly reasonable to not run your own email.
- pluma 12y ago
  Sure, but it can still be quite daunting if you're not much of a sysadmin. I'm a web developer primarily and though I feel confident setting up a basic web server and SSH, I'm not even entirely sure what software I need or should use (when there are multiple alternatives) to set up a fully working e-mail server. Add to that messing with cryptic configuration files while reading about the dangers of doing it wrong and the general impression is that you shouldn't be touching any of it unless you fully understand it all. As far as beginner friendliness goes, it's a bit like desktop Linux was ten years ago.
  - bad_user 12y ago
    > As far as beginner friendliness goes, it's a bit like desktop Linux was ten years ago No, it's much worse. 10 years ago you could get a desktop Linux up and running, the experience wasn't that much different from today and even if you screwed up, you could always reinstall it from scratch, but with email screw-ups may mean getting your domain blacklisted and good luck fixing it afterwards.
  - e12e 12y ago
    There is a bit of a documentation vacuum. We (Linux users, admins and developers) could learn a lot from freebsd and openbsd here. Something like https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/task-mail-server https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/task-mail-server gets you on your way (maybe too far, actually -- you probably don't want/need all that for an initial setup) -- but certificate requests, and certificates is still too hard. https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ssl-cert https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ssl-cert helps, but afaik, nothing automagically does the right thing, yet (install certifate under /etc/ssl and the private key under /etc/ssl/private and symlink under /etc/exim/cert.{key|der or whatever} and ditto for other daemons that share the same cert/key. And then there is tuning to disable plain text for most of those services. So, yeah, it's still too complex. I really don't understand everyone that are panicked about getting your domain blacklisted -- yes, if you send spam you'll be blacklisted. Yes, if you set up an open relay, that's bad. But you really have to work pretty hard to set up an open relay these days.
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    iRedMail is pretty nice for helping you get a mail server set up easily with sane defaults: http://www.iredmail.org/features.html http://www.iredmail.org/features.html

by pluma 12y ago

e12e 12y ago

Actually, with any reasonable smtp server, the defaults these days are pretty good -- so email abuse/open relay isn't the problem it once was. The hurdle (if any) these days is making sure email you send isn't flagged as spam, and to a lesser extent to avoid receiving spam (I say lesser, but then I've been running greylisting from day one, which is a minor nuisance, in and off itself). That said, using a good service (like fastmail) vs running your own will always be a trade-off -- and it's perfectly reasonable to not run your own email.

pluma 12y ago
Sure, but it can still be quite daunting if you're not much of a sysadmin. I'm a web developer primarily and though I feel confident setting up a basic web server and SSH, I'm not even entirely sure what software I need or should use (when there are multiple alternatives) to set up a fully working e-mail server. Add to that messing with cryptic configuration files while reading about the dangers of doing it wrong and the general impression is that you shouldn't be touching any of it unless you fully understand it all. As far as beginner friendliness goes, it's a bit like desktop Linux was ten years ago.
- bad_user 12y ago
  > As far as beginner friendliness goes, it's a bit like desktop Linux was ten years ago No, it's much worse. 10 years ago you could get a desktop Linux up and running, the experience wasn't that much different from today and even if you screwed up, you could always reinstall it from scratch, but with email screw-ups may mean getting your domain blacklisted and good luck fixing it afterwards.
- e12e 12y ago
  There is a bit of a documentation vacuum. We (Linux users, admins and developers) could learn a lot from freebsd and openbsd here. Something like https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/task-mail-server https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/task-mail-server gets you on your way (maybe too far, actually -- you probably don't want/need all that for an initial setup) -- but certificate requests, and certificates is still too hard. https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ssl-cert https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ssl-cert helps, but afaik, nothing automagically does the right thing, yet (install certifate under /etc/ssl and the private key under /etc/ssl/private and symlink under /etc/exim/cert.{key|der or whatever} and ditto for other daemons that share the same cert/key. And then there is tuning to disable plain text for most of those services. So, yeah, it's still too complex. I really don't understand everyone that are panicked about getting your domain blacklisted -- yes, if you send spam you'll be blacklisted. Yes, if you set up an open relay, that's bad. But you really have to work pretty hard to set up an open relay these days.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  iRedMail is pretty nice for helping you get a mail server set up easily with sane defaults: http://www.iredmail.org/features.html http://www.iredmail.org/features.html