My experience of self-hosting email (unpopular opinion) reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Illuminated_Humanoid · 2023-11-05 07:29 Considering everything I have read in this Subreddit regarding self- hosting email, I am expecting to be downvoted into the pits of hell for even daring to say this out loud, and that's okay with me because I feel it must be said for others who are searching here for answers and advice like I once was. I don't want them to be discouraged because of FUD, as they say in the crypto community. Here goes... I am the type of person who loves to solve problems and am always up for a challenge. Since getting into the self-hosting hobby, I have continuously searched for the next cool service to self-host, which I am sure is what all of us do quite regularly. For me, that next service was email. I didn't have a clue where to begin, so I began to read into it, and immediately I noticed a pattern that was clear as day and consistent across all discussion boards including this one, and that message was "self-hosting email is not worth the trouble". The warnings made me very curious, and I just had to try for myself to see what this fearmongering about self-hosted email was. Well, I'm here to tell you that in my experience, all the warnings and cautions were nonsense and so far non-existent. I'll tell you right off the bat that there was zero magic involved. All I did was the following: \#1. Obtained a static IP from my ISP \#2. Chose Synology MailPlus on my NAS as my mail server \#3. Purchased a domain on [www.porkbun.com](https://www.porkbun.com) \#4. Followed the instructions on [this video](https://youtu.be/o66UFsodUYo?si=4GDATwQJtYsY2IT2) \#5. Made sure all firewall rules on both my router and NAS are properly configured That's it. Simple as that. Works great for sending and receiving mail. I have run numerous tests, and it's been rock solid for about 6 months now. Never had a single email lost or end up in junk mail folders with any of the big email providers. My advice is, if you are interested in hosting your own email and are on the fence because of the FUD that has been peddled across self-hosting communities, don't buy into that cynicism. It's perfectly doable, and I didn't find a single moment of it to be frustrating, despite not being exactly the most advanced user in this field. If this post encourages just one person to pull the trigger, my objective is a success. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedditSlayer2020 · 2023-11-05 07:46 I'm selfhosting email for 25 years now and overall habe a good experience. The BIG MAIL Provider's have made trouble now and then but once they had enough evidence that I am not a spammer all went well. Capitalism doesn't like competition it's literally war for resources. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mirisbowring · 2023-11-05 08:06 Since my IPS does not offer static IPs for consumers and the business offers are fucking expensive, I rented a VPS. This is the only trouble source since some BIG providers like Microsoft block me since other IPs from the subnet have been „malicious“. In the beginning i was writing the MS support to delist me - which always worked but only for around 3 months until i ended up on the blocklist again. After a year or so i got so annoyed that i created an AWS account and am using the free tier Mail SMTP service for outbound mails to microsoft. Since then, i never had any trouble anymore ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pomtom44 · 2023-11-05 08:11 I self host my own email because im constantly coming up with ideas and projects which dont go anywhere, and I dont want to be paying for a "365" subscription, or similar each time a project ends up in the "to do later" pile What I do which is slitly different is I have a cheap $5 a month VPS which runs proxmox mail gateway all incoming emails go to that first, so its a static IP which is on the providers infrastructure (Not tied to a residentual IP) It also acts as a spam filter, and a mailbag so if my home internet goes offline, the mail will sit there till it can re-send to my main server Then outbound I have it sending via brevo, so outbound is using their IP, and I dont have to worry again about a residential IP being picked up for spam or whatever They have 300 a month free or something outbound emails. If I ever have a project which goes over that, then ill migrate to AWS SES which is cheap as chips, and use that as my outgoing relay ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Old-Satisfaction-564 · 2023-11-05 08:21 The only problem is that dynamic ip addresses are blacklisted on most mail server and CANNOT send email, a few (misconfigured) server will also not send email. The RFC clearly say that dynamic IP addresses cannot send SMTP email. There is a blocklist used by a lot if not most mail server to refuse receiving SMTP email, that contains all dynamically assigned IP https://opendbl.net/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 08:24 I am sure it's possible. I just don't WANT to self host in and outgoing email. It's too important for my everyday life to fail... What do you do if you Synology NAS goes up in smoke? Order a new one on Amazon and are not reachable for a week? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gelvis_1 · 2023-11-05 08:27 Same here. Big tech have made it a bit more bothersome, but it still works great ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 08:28 But... That sounds extremely complicated, what exactly do you get in return for all that hassle? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pomtom44 · 2023-11-05 08:37 Its really not that complicated. the hardest part was getting the spam gateway setup and that took an hour with a few youtube videos What I get is 10 years worth of emails, totaling a few hundred GB 10-15 domains with a minimum of 5 emails on each, some with more Control over my data, and it costs me $5 a month for the VPS Plus power for my server, but Im paying that anyway for the other things I host, so thats pretty much $0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 08:44 It sounds like a lot of moving parts and potentially failing things. You can just get a "professionally" hosted email account from a trustworthy provider and retrieve it to your own server whenever new mail comes in. https://work-work.work/blog/2018/12/15/getmail-systemd-imap-idle.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PopeMeeseeks · 2023-11-05 08:48 The problem with self-hosted email is in my case two: my providers do not let me open the email ports (it is a paid option) and conventional email servers make it difficult for you to exchange emails with them. Personally it is not worth it. I am not selling drugs or running for presidency to have that kind of worry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-11-05 08:54 I think you're forgetting that this is r/selfhosted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 08:57 Haha, sure. You mean the subreddit where people worship tailscale and cloudflare because they don't know how to configure a proxy server and a firewall? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Azsde · 2023-11-05 09:07 How did big maik provider ended up trusting your email domain ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 09:12 Btw... technically you are sellf-hosting your mail server with the retrieval scenario, you are just not receiving the mail via SMTP but via IMAP which means you are sourcing out all the complex parts. Just like when you are using a VPS instead of having a server you built in a Co-Location facility. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gsid42 · 2023-11-05 09:13 I have been running a mail server on a bare metal Debian from 2014. First 3 months were a struggle with mail ending up in spam but haven’t had a major issue since then. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yamalight · 2023-11-05 09:18 I've started self-hosting email ~4 years ago. Worst part was removing IP I got for my server from some blacklists (took about a year to be 100% clean0 - from there on it has been pretty much smooth sailing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kurucu83 · 2023-11-05 09:22 I ran company and personal accounts on Mail in a Box for several years, trouble free. First on DO and then Linode I think. Three times I had to go through the unblocking process, and three times I was unblocked in moments. Two because I migrated the servers to update, and got assigned IP addresses that were misused. It was easy, mostly because MAIB is specifically easy and boring, so that it just works. I sometimes regret moving to Fastmail - the only reason being that I got scared about running my own email. I was never blocked, the system is very stable, easy to back up and restore. We had dozens of devices running off each VPS I stopped because I worried about a "what if" day, and not worrying about the is something I'm apparently willing to pay for. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pomtom44 · 2023-11-05 09:29 At that point you could say the same for any self hosted service Web, email, game servers, plex, home assistant, DNS (pi hole) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tech2but1 · 2023-11-05 09:29 > I dont want to be paying for a "365" subscription, or similar each time a project ends up in the "to do later" pile You don't have to. This is like saying that car ownership is expensive because I have to buy a new another one every time I go somewhere new. I have loads of projects and thousands of email addresses across 10's of domains and even more sub-domains. I don't have to pay for a "365" subscription every time I add a new domain or email, and in fact I don't pay MS for anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tech2but1 · 2023-11-05 09:32 I would always say "don't do it" when someone asks about selfhosting email. I don't say this because it can't be done though, I say this because it *can be* unreliable and I don't want the hassle. There are other things I would rather spend time on and have email be a thing that "just works". I think you've completely misunderstood the reasons why people in this sub say "don't host email". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zarlo5899 · 2023-11-05 09:33 by there users not marking emails from you as spam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zarlo5899 · 2023-11-05 09:35 i have been self hosting my email for like 7 years now just on a VPS not my home network ---------------------------------------------------------------------- yakadoodle123 · 2023-11-05 09:36 I’m more than happy paying MXroute $4 p/month for 100gb and that gives me unlimited domains / unlimited mailboxes / unlimited users and let them worry about the spam / deliverability / security etc. For me it’s not worth me trying to self host and always wondering if my mail server is working correctly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- helphp · 2023-11-05 09:37 Do your cell service next Also deliver your own physical mail ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Independent_Till5832 · 2023-11-05 09:43 He read into it duhh, he surely has mx backup :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 09:48 Most MTA will try to deliver an email of up to a week. So no problem of downtime to be honest. In the end you have a wrong view what email is. Email is and was never an instant message with guaranteed delivery. Emails do get lost all the time and people really need to learn to treat email as a nice tool but not **the** tool. If you want instant delivery with delivery guarantee: Call the person in question. Anything else can be seen as *might reach the recipient*. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- austozi · 2023-11-05 09:50 I think the general conclusion from this sub is that it's not impossible to selfhost email, but it's not worth the trouble. The trouble is not about getting it up and running the first time, but keeping it running reliably. The problem with selfhosting email, unlike selfhosting services like Jellyfin or Nextcloud, is that you rely on other people's servers to play ball with you, and they often don't. Or they play for a while and then suddenly decide not to without telling you. It's unpredictable and we selfhosters don't have enough control over that. Whenever there's been a post about this topic, the comments have always point to mixed experiences. This post simply reinforces that people's experiences are mixed, it doesn't negate that it didn't work for many other people. I'm glad it's working for you, and I hope that it continues to work. But I think the take-home message is still to approach it cautiously and recognise what could go wrong. If you can't afford to have your email not being delivered or received for a day or two, do not selfhost it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wheelerandrew · 2023-11-05 09:53 Bravo, brave soul. I totally agree. Never had a problem. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 10:04 I work freelance. Receiving a mail a week late means business suicide. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- boli99 · 2023-11-05 10:12 time. patience. get your IP clean, and off all the blocklists keep the IP clean renew your domain for multiple years dont let idiots send spam through it the first month or two are the worst. after that it gets much much easier. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 10:13 Correct, and what do you do if you write them an email and they don't respond? You call or IM them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 10:19 I think another point is that "email" has a different importance to different people. If you are working in a company, in an office job, with a work mail account which handles all your professional communication, hosting your own mail server is something you can consider spending your time on. I am working freelance, if I receive a request for quotation, I often have a very limited time window for getting back the them, or they will hire someone else. I wouldnt want to lose a job because my cat peed on my Synologys PSU. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- efreem01 · 2023-11-05 10:21 I did the following: -digital ocean droplet for $10-$15 / mo with cent7 -buy a domain name -set reverse DNS entry to the fqdn for your instance -set SPF and DKIM records -install iredmail I have been hosting my own mail for 10 years. Cheap and easy IMHO. I started with cent6 and AWS but the bill just crept higher and higher. Digital Ocean also offers a virtual console. Don't bother to self host email from your home. I started doing that, but it's a pain in the ass and $15/no was well worth it to minimize problems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 10:22 That's not how things work. Companies often send out dozen emails asking for a quote. If they get a "delayed delivery" message from you, they just move on to the competitor, they will not call. That's the same thing for websites. I saw statistics once that when potential clients try to access your website and receive a 404, they will not come back later to try again. Sometimes you only got one shot for these types of things. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xupetas · 2023-11-05 10:24 Same here. Selfhosting my email since 1996 and besides the usual crap from big tech i never had big issue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xupetas · 2023-11-05 10:25 Regular email "cleanness policy", so basically not allowing anyone to spam the hell out of your server, DKIM & SPF enforced. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xCharg · 2023-11-05 10:26 Good that it's working for you. Try to somehow up the level where it's not just you sending a test mail once every month or so - but, say, 20-50 people using your server, keep it running. Chances of your mailserver being blacklisted by someone somewhere at some point is pretty high (it's not guaranteed, just high) and your control over that is next to none. Literally nothing you can do about it. It may strike you tomorrow, it may be in 3 months or in 10 years after your username grows enough, or even if you remain a single user. That uncertainty is **the** reason why as a general rule of thumb people recommend to not selfhost email. Not because it won't work - it obviously will. Its because of disparity between selfhosting mindset where half the point is total control and what you get with mail - zero control. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 10:29 No, you cannot: the gain vs complexity vs dependency triangle is totally different with the other services you mentioned. If my jellyfin, Homeassistant etc is not reachable for a week, I don't give a fuck. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 10:36 So, how do you make sure your email is delivered 100%? And not just delivered, not marked as SPAM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nurseynurseygander · 2023-11-05 10:39 Definitely. I’m on an ordinary domestic internet and power setup. Both are vulnerable to occasional outages. It’s rare, but it’s not rare enough to trust my email and livelihood to it. I’m glad it works for OP and there may come a time when I do the same, but at this point I can get better reliability and resiliency outside. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AdrianTeri · 2023-11-05 10:46 Up for sharing your experience after ~1yr? Down to reading a blog or if you're content creator some video log ... Remindme! 1 year to update how self hosting email is going. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- undernocircumstance · 2023-11-05 10:47 Self hosted own email for 10+ years, first with iredmail and now with mailcow, can't recommend mailcow enough. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Plane_Resolution7133 · 2023-11-05 10:49 It’s not hard at all, I did it myself for years. The issue I faced back then with not static IP was if my dynamic IP happened to be in one of the numerous blacklists, if it had previously been used for spamming for example. It could take days or weeks to clear the blacklist, and in that time, no relays would talk to my server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- austozi · 2023-11-05 10:50 The importance different people attach to their email service definitely plays a role. From OP's description, they seem to be hosting this as a hobby or for personal use. Big corporations almost always outsource their email, because it's more economical to do it that way. Email is very important in a corporate environment, because it's used not just for communication but for ID/verification. If it's not done properly, it can be the single point of failure that brings everything else down, with real legal and financial implications. Unless your core business is providing email services, you probably don't want to take the risk. I wouldn't even selfhost my own personal email because it also underpins so much that I do (online ID, banking, etc.), but I cannot say I will be able to keep it running reliably, because I don't have control over how other people's servers handle my email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- villan · 2023-11-05 11:00 We all know it’s possible, it’s just not generally worth the effort when I can pay someone $10 a year to host my email and deal with any issues that come up. I self hosted email for years and it largely worked fine, but there was half a dozen companies that just silently dropped important emails without letting me know, because my server lacked reputation. It’s worth $10 a year for me to never think about email again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 11:01 You are mixing up the power relationships, it's not a symmetrical relation. I absolutely will call the company to ask if they received my mail. Corporation X will not call Freelance Y if he received their mail if they have 10 other people in their pool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ffimnsr · 2023-11-05 11:01 The thing with email hosting is that there's a lot to know before just putting it on public internet. It needs to be correctly configured, i.e., dmarc, dkim, etc. etc. Even making sure your email is whitelisted on all. It's not just running software and calling it a day. Plus, the maintenance and running your own plugs, fail2ban, spam filters, anti ddos, av, and monitoring logs. And keeping the software up to date. It's not good, basically if it's for one person. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 11:07 That's what I said. **You** have to call if they don't respond to your email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- djgizmo · 2023-11-05 11:13 It’ll work, until it doesn’t, and then you’ll have to track down why. Then you’ll be fighting… your isp, spamhause, or some other black list your domain/IP has showed up on. MANY mail providers block email from newly registered domains that are not hosted with the bigs. For the $6 per month, I’ll just pay MS to do it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 11:13 How exactly would I know that they wanted to send me a mail if I didn't receive it? Unfortunately I am not a clairvoyance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 11:16 Is it that hard to read that **you** sent **them** an email? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 11:18 ... that's not what we are discussing though. We are talking about I fictious scenario were companies reach out to freelancers who host their email on their synology nas. It's a bit funny that you are pretending something else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zaTricky · 2023-11-05 11:20 I know MXs reject connections from dynamic ranges - but I doubt it's due to RFC. Can you provide a source for that part? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- uekiamir · 2023-11-05 11:22 Are you stupid? OP is talking about the **first** email for quotation from the business, not the 2nd email AKA the reply which is what you're talking about. Why would **OP** send **them** an email when OP does not yet know what they want? Or that they've even reached out via email? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ElevenNotes · 2023-11-05 11:22 That was my initial statement to you, but it seems you just ignored that so I will now end this useless discussion here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zaTricky · 2023-11-05 11:22 And then you don't get your 2FA emails for your bank to confirm payments for the new NAS. lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilolalu · 2023-11-05 11:22 I do understand the desire to keep your email on your own server. Without a space limit, without privacy considerations, better indexing for searching. That's why I retrieve my mail from a professionally hosted mail server, but serve them via IMAP from my own server. If my mail server is down, they will pile up on the upstream service, where I can read them as well using their webmil etc. Is just don't want to handle SMTP, dkim, blocklists, etc.pp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bedroompurgatory · 2023-11-05 11:23 I self-hosted for about 10 years. Now I just use an MX service. Keeping up with all the deliverability bullshit was more trouble than it was worth. Email's a failed protocol, IMO. People used communication lists with whitelist-by-default for their actual communications these days - Messanger, WhatsApp, etc. Email's just used to reset passwords and get lots of spam. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ToNIX_ · 2023-11-05 11:24 I ended up simply using the email forward offered by porkbun. You can create up to 20 free email forwards by domain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- big_dog_redditor · 2023-11-05 11:30 I use Dynu.com for outbound SMTP relay, and include their info in my sender authentication authority info as a means to mitigate the dynamic IP aspect. I guess that puts me at risk of their service being hit with reputational blocking, but so far no issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Cybasura · 2023-11-05 11:34 The only reason to self-host email is for temporary private network email usage, such as maybe email verification when signing up etc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- itachi_konoha · 2023-11-05 12:03 The issue is, as a hobby it is perfectly fine. But when there's liabilities, you are answerable.... Then the whole thing changes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- haqk · 2023-11-05 12:25 Setting up a mail server is the easy part. Keeping your mail out of recipients' spam boxes is where the fun begins. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KN4MKB · 2023-11-05 12:34 I've hosted my own email server for 4 years. I can tell you, 6 months is too early to see many problems. While I recommend people do it, because it helps reclaim some power from the large providers, caution is warranted. As an example, 2 years into having my email server, a friend of mine visited a subdomain with the same parent as my email server on Chrome to a jellyfin instance I had hosted. Google decided my jellyfin instance was a phishing site because it looked like many others after doing a scan from his browser. It flagged my entire parent domain and all subdomain, and so anyone with chrome got a big scary red "your being attacked" message on their browser. Then, naturally other scanning websites took googles word and blacklisted my domain across the board. I couldn't even visit it from work or my phone from Firefox anymore. Emails started getting rejected both directions because everyone on the internet decided I was a bad guy from that one google auto scan. It took several weeks of phone calls and emails to each individual virus/scan tool company, and linking them to the jellyfin github issue thread to finally get my domain and it's subdomain off the lists. A week or so later, email was fine. Now I have to tell anyone visiting any of my sib domains to use edge or Firefox or risk getting my email domain blacklisted for weeks. That's one example of something that could be in your future. But there are many more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kuzared · 2023-11-05 12:39 This is huge. I might contemplate hosting my private email, but as a sysadmin, no way I’m doing that in a professional environment. There’s more than enough headaches and pain points, I really wouldn’t want another one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ion_GPT · 2023-11-05 12:42 I realized that the email is the single point of failure for me. Everything else has backup plans, but if google decides to discontinue Gmail I am fucked big time. I am looking into a solution for this, but I don’t think that self hosting it on my nas is the best solution ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hakube · 2023-11-05 13:08 show me your delivery reports before declaring success. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- devkareem · 2023-11-05 13:09 It's probably because of rDNS (PTR), as a lot of email service providers will reject your email if you don't have one set correctly to the mailserver hostname. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- npsimons · 2023-11-05 13:11 As another email self-hoster (and have been for decades) I have to thank you for speaking out, but there *is* more to it than that if you want it to work *well*. You need, DMARC, DKIM and maybe SRS. You need to check blacklists, and probably run some yourself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SpongederpSquarefap · 2023-11-05 13:12 Yeah this is the issue OP says he got a static address from his ISP, but it's still residential so you'll get blacklisted just for being a residential IP OK well you can just relay through another SMTP server right? Yep, but now you're not self hosting it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anna_lynn_fection · 2023-11-05 13:17 I've been running my own mail server (for multiple domains) since I started being an ISP server admin back in the 90's. The only problems I've ever had was when a user got a server blacklisted because they got hacked. That's really the only issue. We're supposed to be all about self hosting here, rather than using someone else's computer, and e-mail could arguably be one of the most important things to self host. The biggest hurdle might be getting your provider to assign a PTR record or delegate the reverse DNS to your name server. That's a must. You want an IP to reverse resolve to something that's a hostname that's not your IP address.provider.com, because a lot of mail providers will treat that as a dynamic IP address and block mail from you on that alone. If you get your IP reverse DNS set up right, DKIM, DMARC, and SPF, and a good password policy, you should have a very trouble free experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 13:29 Are you able to send emails to outlook.com accounts? That's an example for something we have never gotten to work. They keep locking us out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 13:31 Email is rigged, you cant play with the big services unless you become a big service. For us, we never got outlook.com/ Hotmail to accept our email. Google thinks we're okay though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 13:35 We cant get Hotmail to want our email for the life of us. Everyone else has been working... Do you have any ideas? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blind_guardian23 · 2023-11-05 13:37 its not when you know what you\`re doing. but making everything on your own is never easy, especially with email. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sohex · 2023-11-05 13:39 Six months is nothing in the life of an email server. The issue isn't usually "the email server I set up this year has been running fine", it's "I set this email server up years ago and now my emails aren't getting delivered out of the blue". You definitely mitigate a substantial amount of concern there by having a dedicated static IP from a (hopefully) clean allocation through your ISP, but that's not an option for a lot of people for one reason or another. It's also much easier if you're the only one using the mail server. If you have friends/family/whomever using it too then it gets tough. For one suddenly you're effectively responsible for making sure all their important emails are being reliably sent and delivered. Potentially more concerning though is that it only takes one of their accounts being compromised and used to spam before your IP gets blacklisted and your ISP won't be happy about it either. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DevelopedLogic · 2023-11-05 13:40 Absolutely agree, same experience, you can even find me discussing it in my comment history on occasion. I use Mailcow and even though I'm hosting with Contabo which has a bad reputation on their IP range, after a few months of use my IP became trusted. Non issue if you're willing to put the time initial setup time and effort in and minimal maintenance past updates afterwards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- taxigrandpa · 2023-11-05 13:50 i'm several years into the same journey. flawless so far ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zaTricky · 2023-11-05 14:18 Probably true - but that's a different reason. The idea that an RFC explicitly says dynamically-assigned IPs may not send unauthenticated email seems unlikely. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SpongederpSquarefap · 2023-11-05 14:27 Through no fault of your own you can get blocked for sending If you use a relay and the IP range that's in gets banned, you're screwed One of the spam providers banned a /11 range in Azure (2 million IPs) It's insane ---------------------------------------------------------------------- apparissus · 2023-11-05 14:32 There is a lot of hubris here and it entirely misses the point of why people say don't bother. Setting up the MX and getting a few emails delivered is trivial. It's maintaining deliverability to every recipient all the time that's a giant PITA. For example, you don't mention getting a PTR (reverse DNS) record from your ISP for that static IP, and doing so is generally hard. That alone guarantees that your email is going straight to spam for many recipients. Even with a PTR record, all it takes is some other yahoo on your ISP getting the same idea and sending a few emails that get marked as spam, and you can find your entire IP block on a bunch of blocklists that may take you months to get off of. Basically, for any given mechanism of hosting email, consider how much effort you've put in, and if it's a level of effort less than professional spammers would be willing to put forth to get their emails delivered, then you are almost guaranteed to have delivery problems at some point. Deliverability is made Hard to reduce spam, and so it's equally Hard for legitimate players to clear that hurdle. I know folks who have BGP routing set up for multiple ASNs with IP blocks entirely under their control (ie they are entirely their own ISP out of a data center) who *still* won't bother with email. If you care about your email actually being delivered, then paying sendgrid or purelymail or whomever to deal with the headaches is just a hugely better use of your time and money, in almost all cases. If I've dissuaded one person from being fooled by this post into thinking, "oh, see, it's all FUD and email is easy," and wasting a ton of time just to throw their hands up in 6 months when it turns out their friend using outlook.com or hotmail will never see their email, I'll be happy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 14:36 Yeah and big guys like Google and Microsoft are an exception to that rule, because they're big companies, they're automatically mega- whitelisted everywhere. As a small person you can't really win. You NEED a gmail/hotmail account if you want to be 100% reliably reachable (it's rare enough that google decides to yeet people...) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BlueArcherX · 2023-11-05 14:40 unfortunately this is the lucky experience of someone that has done this once and has little technical background on why doing it can be bad (and ultimately will be) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chris17453 · 2023-11-05 14:44 I just run mailu in a docker container. I haven't done anything to it for years. Have five or six domains and maybe a hundred or so users. Runs perfectly fine. I use an Android app on my phone for the mail and it comes with its own web interface The one I'm currently using is rainlloop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ichdasich · 2023-11-05 14:46 I am somewhat curious how your synology mail-plus setup scores here: https://www.email-security-scans.org/ Can I motivate to do that test? :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BlueArcherX · 2023-11-05 14:48 OP please ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IndexTwentySeven · 2023-11-05 14:56 MXRoute is pretty reliable on delivery it seems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnomalyNexus · 2023-11-05 14:56 > Never had a single email lost How do you know though? This is one of those things where to me “seems to be working” isn’t good enough ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sohgnar · 2023-11-05 14:58 Ive self hosted personal and client email for years with varying success. Mostly it has to do with finding (and keeping) a clean ip reputation. Hosting services like digital ocean, amazon and others are cess pools for abuse and that can cause entire netblocks of ips for them to appear in dnsbl lists and such. Ive been fortunate with my current virtual machine provider that I’ve obtained and been able to keep a clean ip address for a couple of years now. Prior to cloud hosting the vm I self hosted on a business internet service from a local isp. Follow good standards, address any breaches or compromises immediately and insist on lengthy secure password practices and you will have fewer issues. Its not impossible. Its just more work than most are willing to expend. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phein4242 · 2023-11-05 14:58 Ive been running my mta for over 20y now, with delivery straight into the inbox on all the major hosters and a bunch of mailinglists. Started with qmail, did postfix for a while, switched to exim and Im currently running opensmtpd. The only issues I had over the course of that period were due to my own configuration and maintenance, not by external factors. The whole reason yours failed, is because you got flagged bc jellyfin. One of the best practices, is to run your mailserver on a separate domain + ip. This is because of ip reputation being used to catch spammers, and its fairly easy to trip these systems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phein4242 · 2023-11-05 15:00 So get some VPS and host the mta there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bbobbo_ · 2023-11-05 15:12 I do the exact same. VPS to host my mail server and Amazon SES SMTP to handle outgoing mail. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevieflyineasy · 2023-11-05 15:17 No down vote necessary, people don't do it because it's simply difficult to get right, as someone who's worked in spam filtering jobs, setting up dmarc dkim projects, and other email projects. I understand it's annoying AF, but perfectly doable, and is on my list of todos. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MiteeThoR · 2023-11-05 15:20 I solved this problem with an O365. Have my own domain and cloud based exchange server. Then I have rules that put pretty much anything in a spam folder. I can make up any email address I want on the fly and it will all get delivered to that box, then if any email address gets compromised I can just kill that address without affecting anything else. That combined with some filters to put known-good stuff in the main inbox. I’ve been doing this for 4-5 years now and it’s been fantastic. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weselko · 2023-11-05 15:22 That has no connection to anything. You can get blacklisted sure, but you can still recieve email. Those blacklists are on the reciever side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weselko · 2023-11-05 15:29 They have a deliverability tool. You should check that out. Also, your mailserver should have logs with they're reply to you emails alas why it was rejected ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Janewaykicksass · 2023-11-05 15:30 Servers and networks are my vocation as well as my avocation. As someone who has managed enterprise email with Groupwise, Domino/Lotus Notes, and Exchange: I welcome email SaaS overlords. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weselko · 2023-11-05 15:32 Mailservers are usualy really chatty. What do the logs say why your email is refused? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- weselko · 2023-11-05 15:32 /me Takes some popcorn and gets comfortable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigLan2 · 2023-11-05 15:49 Yeah, it felt like the OP's ISP is the difference. If you're on a big ISP you're more likely to be blacklisted before even starting out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 15:56 I think last time I checked they just were accepted and then quietly not received ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JackDostoevsky · 2023-11-05 16:07 You literally couldn't pay me to host email. As in, that used to be my job, and I used to do it for a paycheck and then I stopped doing it because it sucks so bad lol. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- levogevo · 2023-11-05 16:35 BTW I got similar jellyfin subdomain issue on chrome, but you can just report the warning is false on the warning page itself and it got resolved for me in 3 days or so ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nxtstp · 2023-11-05 17:00 Been self hosting my personal email server for 9 years. FreeBSD jail running postfix and dovecot. No problems. Medium barrier to entry and I’m sure there are way easier solutions out there but I agree, the internet communities discourage it to a disproportionate degree. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BloodyIron · 2023-11-05 17:05 > getting it up and running the first time, but keeping it running reliably. In my experience it's effectively zero effort. If you're using an actually good E-Mail suite (in my case Zimbra OSE) then that takes generally all the burden off. > that you rely on other people's servers to play ball with you If you actually follow recommended practices like SPF records etc, then this actually really is not a problem. I haven't had to deal with "other servers playing nice" as a problem for many years. That's the whole point of SPF records etc. I've self-hosted my E-Mail in a modern way for over a decade, and I don't regret it at all. It's been very worthwhile for me. Yes I know I'm a sample size of one, but I agree with OP that the premise of it "not being worth the trouble" is a lot of FUD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LtChachee · 2023-11-05 17:08 The answer is yes, /u/ElevenNotes is stupid. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BloodyIron · 2023-11-05 17:09 Been self-hosting my personal and business E-Mail for over a decade. Totally worth it. As a heads-up, my outbound goes through my ISP's SMTP relay, which helps massively with E-Mail reputation. But I also have SPF and generally all the industry recommended configuration stuff set up. The "not worth the hassle" is overblown. FYI I use Zimbra OSE + Z-Push (for EAS) at this time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dhuscha · 2023-11-05 17:10 I will not recommend other people do so one way or another, but I also am hosting my own Mailserver. Granted this is for my personal domains and notifications from my servers. Use to run docker-Mailserver then moved to just running my own postfix/dovecot set up. Probably another hot topic but I work for a company that still hosts our own exchange so maybe we just like glutting for punishment ;) I will say being an admin monitoring spam filters how many companies can’t get DNS records for mail correct. From dkim records to SPF alignment and DMARC is astounding from some big companies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- buttstuff2023 · 2023-11-05 17:10 The trouble is not keeping it running, once it's set up it requires very little maintenance. The trouble is getting it set up so your email is delivered properly in the first place. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- buttstuff2023 · 2023-11-05 17:10 Uh relating your email through another SMPT server does not mean you're not self hosting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- spiralout112 · 2023-11-05 17:12 Same, been doing it for years, never had a single issue and I'm sorry but if there's a single service that I don't want in the hands of big tech it's my email. Some of the comments in here are pretty pathetic too, who goes to a self housing subreddit and acts like a childish prick because people are self hosting email... Some people need to be reminded that if all you're doing is shitting all over something maybe you should just stfu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zer04ll · 2023-11-05 17:36 Do you have Dmarc enabled if you don't you should, you will notice your emails get rejected by a lot of domains because your IP is not whitelisted as a trusted SMTP server. This is something that Google is fucking evil for they convinced the world to start flagging nonwhitelisted IPs as spam. While certain email servers will work with you there are alot that wont so it makes doing business impossible when it matters. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jaxx32767 · 2023-11-05 17:49 Agreed. Another thing to note is that the amount of work required to maintain deliverability depends on what your email requirements are. Obviously personal or low-volume business email is going to be easier to manage than a business that sends out hundreds of thousands of emails per week and having to deal with issues such as getting flagged as spam for various reasons. Staying delisted from spam organizations and “keeping clean” is a job on its own. As others have stated, getting off spam lists can take a lot of time and effort. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SpongederpSquarefap · 2023-11-05 18:05 True, but you're relying on another host for sending mail ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3adc3II · 2023-11-05 18:09 Meanwhile, I got many problems when managing company email on Microsoft 365. Phishing, spoofing emails, dealing with email security everyday, analyzing DMARC reports. Last year, there were real cases of spoofing emails happened in 1 of regional office. I think hosting email for few people is fine, shouldnt have too much issue , but I nvr want to do it for myself. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shdwdrgn · 2023-11-05 18:11 The only thing I've found unreliable about email is trying to communicate with Microsoft servers. I've been running email from the same domain name longer than they've known what email was, and yet every few years they will randomly mark my domain as untrusted despite their own tools showing no incidents of complaints or received spams. Other than their failures, I haven't had trouble with email in more than 15 years when Comcast decided to start using SPF and couldn't correctly interpret my own records (I think because I had IPv6 addresses listed along with IPv4). My point is, the only trouble I've ever had with email was with big companies rejecting messages because their own systems did something wrong, and yet the common recommendation is that we're supposed to trust these same companies to get it right? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Adesfire · 2023-11-05 18:12 I'm hosting an email server for my domain. It works flawlessly for months now. Static IP with good reputation, DKIM and all properly setup. This server is used to manage communication with stores, e-commerce, forums and all kinds of businesses I don't trust. I have created a wildcard account for me, another one for my wife, and a generic wildcard used when an email address is requested in order to get an e-bill. All those emails are forwarded to our Emails accounts. Indeed, despite it works great and have not to complain about, our main email accounts still on Gmail. I know that one day my server could be down, electricity could cut off, or any event could happen while we are away in need of an email. Measure the risk and decide, it's all down to you in the end ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hotapple002 · 2023-11-05 18:13 I think you are completely right about the importance part. I only set up a mail server so I don’t have to deal with the pain of using Gmail or my iCloud email for my services. It’s especially painful for the services that require access to the inbox. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tech2but1 · 2023-11-05 18:22 You're still missing the point. Yes you can host email yourself, but if you're asking on reddit about how to go about it then it's probably not for you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AnApexBread · 2023-11-05 18:35 >I think the general conclusion from this sub is that it's not impossible to selfhost email, but it's not worth the trouble. Yup. That's the impression I get. It's certainly possible to do it but is it really worth the effort (especially for those of us who aren't willing to pay for a static IP like OP)? For 99% of us the answer is "no. It's not worth the effort." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dendob · 2023-11-05 18:45 Not true, if you get a static IP, and setup your dkim / spf and other security records up correctly then mail will flow correctly. The moment you end up on a blacklist , the bounce will show why your email was dropped. 9/10 part of the setup is not secure or even setup. If you want to make sure before you begin you can check the major IP blocks for your provider against the big black lists on mxtoolbox ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeatPicky310 · 2023-11-05 18:49 Do you have a failover mechanism? And what do you use to monitor intrusion (e.g. someone doing DDoS with your ports, or they've gotten into a container through some zero-day) and system health (e.g. your systems did not apply some updates for some reasons). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheDiaryofaSoyBean · 2023-11-05 18:57 In my experience I’ve done both of the following: purchase a cheap VPS from Ionos for $25 a month and host my mail server there, use RapidVPN and buy a static IP because they allow port forwarding on all ports. Both have functioned fine and are very cheap to implement. Just incase anyone else was wanting to do this as well ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fractalfocuser · 2023-11-05 19:07 **DMARC is not that hard, people just don't understand DNS** OP is right and anybody saying otherwise is a coward. Microshits and Goofbal want all our email traffic. You can let them have them, and you may save some time yea. Or you can self-host, and they can never take your free software! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anna_lynn_fection · 2023-11-05 19:12 I don't have any automated failover for that system. There are container (lxc) replications made nightly for the system itself. User data is replicated more frequently to a backup NFS server. Both the live and backup are on NFS servers with snapshots on btrfs raid10. Never needed the backups. Not much I can do with DDoS in my situation. It's never happened though. fail2ban monitors and blocks account attacks. If any system has zero days, all bets are off. You never know what vector that's coming from or where it's going. Segreate services as much as possible. That lxc container running the mail server is running in a libvirt/qemu VM. They'd have to break out of both. While not impossible - not likely. Again - never happened. Keep updates done. That system gets checked on and used frequently. It's not exactly mission critical. The only clients I have on there with my mail are the ones who I've had for 25 years and they just won't go. We aren't pursuing hosting any more, but if they want to continue paying us, in spite of us telling them they could get cheaper services somewhere else, then I'll continue to collect a check for doing next to nothing. Systems are debian and use unattended-upgrades which has a mechanism to send e-mail if updates fail. In all those years, I think the mailserver may have accumulated 1-2 hours of downtime, and that would be from upgrades. The point is - you don't need to be Amazon, MS, or google, to run an e-mail server that is dependable. You shouldn't be as afraid to run your server as you are having your e-mail in someone else's hands. Especially when almost every online account you have relies on e-mail for either MFA, recovery, or verification. Especially if you're just running it for yourself and/or your immediate family. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- du_ra · 2023-11-05 19:17 Also hosting my mailserver for 15-20 years now and it’s totally fine to do that. You just need to know your limits and, as all public facing services which interact with others, know about security and protocols. And I had a lot less problems than many people who uses public services. And I can build cool stuff on top of it, and really important, I know that my mails will not just be read (legally) by police or any other authority without my knowledge. Any public service needs to offer that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- death_hawk · 2023-11-05 19:18 Even passing that mail tester with flying colors (ie proper DKIM/SPF), having a static IP that's only been used by me for years, having a "regular" TLD, and passing blacklists I've never been able to successfully send to quite a number of recipients. I signed up with a smaller mail delivery agent and I could instantly send emails. It was silly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- du_ra · 2023-11-05 19:19 Outlook is hell, even for big players. The block the biggest german mailservices on regular bases… ---------------------------------------------------------------------- du_ra · 2023-11-05 19:20 How is this related to mail server? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- death_hawk · 2023-11-05 19:22 I'd actually love to host my own cell service. I looked into it as a test platform a good while ago and it was fascinating for like a small site or somewhere remote. Obviously extremely difficult to do in a large population center though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- du_ra · 2023-11-05 19:24 If a week of mail problems is business suicide, the business is your problem, not the mail server. If your mailprovider has problems, which could happen, even with the biggest (like Microsoft), then your business is dead? That’s crazy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dairy8469 · 2023-11-05 19:37 > Edit: People downvoting this should really learn that there is no way to guarantee your email is delivered and seen by the other party. You're making it sound like emails with gmail have some horribly low success rate. People know that email isn't guaranteed, what they also know is that self hosting results in failure rate orders or magnitude higher than using a major provider. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rollinghunger · 2023-11-05 19:44 What’s your preferred MX? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- james2432 · 2023-11-05 19:45 for most ISPs it's not even possible unless you have a business line as they block port 25 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- U8dcN7vx · 2023-11-05 19:52 Might have been quarantined or delivered to junk and/or the recipient is blind (or lying). Microsoft almost never loses or discards accepted messages -- they do silently discard if you are on their extreme spammer list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- U8dcN7vx · 2023-11-05 19:56 Most carriers have a way for you to use them but run (most of) the show yourself, but normally they want big money to do so. Your own MVNO is similar. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- U8dcN7vx · 2023-11-05 19:58 /s aside ... Most governments don't allow that or would require their official post also be able to handle the pieces. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VexingRaven · 2023-11-05 20:08 > they're automatically mega-whitelisted everywhere. You would think so but I have personally seen where an entire org randomly can't send email because one of Exchange Online's IPs got blacklisted. It was fixed quickly, but it *does* happen. Which is all the more reason I would never want to do email myself, because if even Exchange Online can get blacklisted for a few hours what hope does little old me have? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- VexingRaven · 2023-11-05 20:09 > We're supposed to be all about self hosting here, rather than using someone else's computer, and e-mail could arguably be one of the most important things to self host. Self-hosting is a sliding scale, not a binary yes/no. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dendob · 2023-11-05 20:16 We have been hosting our own exchange since forever, never had issues. We did time our sending of mails to not be in bursts, as that will always get you on a blacklist. What other and bigger providers do is temper mass mailings and have a bigger spread in emails / domains / targets. If you just drop 1000 mails in a few minutes, you will have issues. If you are not mass emailing, you should not encounter that hurdle. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sachz1992 · 2023-11-05 20:31 honestly, i've been running my own mail through mailcow for like over 2 years, might be more but I don't remember. I've had an issue once that my subnet was marked on a blacklist. Contacted my host provider and everything was solved within the day. Since then i've only tweaked my spam filter, but thats it. ​ Been running great for 5+ domains, including other people using my "shared hosting email" for the whole period. I do have rules for people joining about sending mails to multiple people, they need to remain in the non-spam category, but if it's multiple small business owners like myself it's worth doing it. Cheaper then the big companies, and tbh, besides running updates it's hassle free and i barely have to look into the environment. ​ Ofcourse I have firewall setup and decent protection to make sure no hacks happen and all that stuff. Crowdsec is handy to have also! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RemindMeBot · 2023-11-05 20:42 I'm really sorry about replying to this so late. There's a [detailed post about why I did here](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/commen ts/13jostq/remindmebot_is_now_replying_to_comments_again/). I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2024-11-05 10:46:24 UTC**](htt p://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-11- 05%2010:46:24%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link **](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/17o6s12/my_experience _of_selfhosting_email_unpopular/k7wt5e8/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Remin dMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2F selfhosted%2Fcomments%2F17o6s12%2Fmy_experience_of_selfhosting_email_u npopular%2Fk7wt5e8%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-11- 05%2010%3A46%3A24%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)] (https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete %20Comment&message=Delete%21%2017o6s12) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remind mebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?t o=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside %20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Yo ur Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot& subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](ht tps://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot %20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10leej · 2023-11-05 20:44 "Works on my computer" > The warnings made me very curious, and I just had to try for myself to see what this fearmongering about self-hosted email was. Well, I'm here to tell you that in my experience, all the warnings and cautions were nonsense and so far non-existent. I'll tell you right off the bat that there was zero magic involved You most likely got blessed by the IPv4 gods, see if you can send email to a outlook.com and gmail address at least once a month. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- death_hawk · 2023-11-05 20:46 I get it takes time especially with some recipients to "warm up" but I've gotten killed in my first dozen emails sent over a period. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tangobravoyankee · 2023-11-05 21:00 > I realized that the email is the single point of failure for me. Everything else has backup plans, but if google decides to discontinue Gmail I am fucked big time. That's kinda where I've been at, except it's more that having a Google identity and Google-provided email tied to so many things is too big a problem if Google decides to cancel _me._ > I am looking into a solution for this, but I don’t think that self hosting it on my nas is the best solution It depends. Synology MailPlus is pretty good but only the first 5 mailboxes are "free." I wouldn't recommend it to anyone not prepared to spend on multiple units for Synology HA or MailPlus HA, or a subscription to a mail spooling service that provides access to recent mail for DR purposes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- slyzik · 2023-11-05 21:19 dnslb servers might block you just because you host mail server in subnets for non-commercial use. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 21:27 Actually kinda scary, maybe microsoft didnt communicate a range or sth ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FierceDeity_ · 2023-11-05 21:29 We have a very large website and use our own email server to dispatch only password and username lost messages and such, we dont even send newsletters.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DubDubz · 2023-11-05 21:32 You saying you don’t want to go back to on prem exchange? That’s just silly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bedroompurgatory · 2023-11-05 21:38 I used [noip.com](https://noip.com), but that's less a considered opinion, and more just using the same people I'd used for a bunch of other stuff over the years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- U8dcN7vx · 2023-11-05 21:45 I've not usually seen myself nor heard of others having messages disappear -- outages excepted. I still suspect delivery to junk that the user overlooked or decided not to admit; some won't ever look in their junk folder. If "and such" aren't clearly transactional they need an unsubscribe header and body links, which shouldn't be single- click since Microsoft's message scanner will likely GET them nor should they redirect especially not via common link shorteners but should only ask to confirm (nothing to fill-out) that uses a POST. Also, generally it is a good idea to sign-up for SNDS and JMRP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- knixx · 2023-11-05 21:50 First of all, GREAT that you have decided to self host, what a great way to learn - Keep it up :). As a professional who has experience securing ISP email services, I've given up hosting email at home. This is coming from someone who created an email service, at home, with all modern standards from my ISP experience: * SPF * DKIM * DMARC * TLS * Greylisting * \+++ It was a great learning experience, but at the end of the day email is the one service that needs to work - all the time. I decided to outsource the email hosting, but I still do most of the DNS magic myself. For me personally, I don't have the time to maintein a modern email service anymore. It is however, without any doubt, a great learning experience. So I applaud you for taking on this challenge and succeeding! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PandemicSoul · 2023-11-05 22:29 You have *six months* of experience. Come back to us in five years when you can't figure out why your lawyer's emails never show up in your inbox, despite relentless blacklist investigation, troubleshooting on the phone with Synology, hours of live chat with your domain/DNS provider, and being billed for two hours of walking your lawyer through making sure it isn't his own idiocy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Norlig · 2023-11-05 22:36 I just swapped ISP and afterwards found out that block port 25... Luckily Mailjet s a free alternative for a mail relay/smart host ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Norlig · 2023-11-05 22:41 Been running Axigen for a few years at home, but considering migrating to a development hosted O365 environment 🤔 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Illuminated_Humanoid · 2023-11-05 22:52 Exaggerate some more, will ya? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Shdwdrgn · 2023-11-05 23:00 True to a point. I mean everyone has to start somewhere, and at one point I did ask questions on... can't remember if it was slashdot, digg, or reddit, but when I converted my setup over to using LDAP and wanted to keep each domain name in its own separate name space, I had a lot of trouble finding all the info I needed to configure postfix. Sometimes google fails you and you just have to ask what seems like it should be easy questions, and hope someone can point you in the right direction. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wolttam · 2023-11-05 23:01 The biggest issue I've run into with self hosting email over the last 7ish years, is that some websites have dumb rules that consider my email invalid simply because it's not in their list of trusted TLDs. It's not a deliverability issue, they won't even try. But those are the exception, the majority of big websites have no problems with my domain and it's been working well for years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gwillen · 2023-11-05 23:07 I selfhost* my email, I would never tell someone off for selfhosting theirs, but I would never ever recommend it to someone who doesn't know what they're getting into. *I get around the biggest problems by cheating. I only use my SMTP server for inbound email. Outbound I have a few third party "smarthost" options I use. This gets me the best of both worlds. My main go-to is using Gmail outbound; on my Gmail account, I can do that as long as the From address is a secondary email on the account. I have heard rumors this might be grandfathered, and I don't know if new accounts can do this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- maksimkurb · 2023-11-05 23:08 I can add that after I self-hosted mail server, I got troubles with Gmail and Outlook throwing my mail to spam and had to use services to pre-heat my email address so it won't appear in junk. Also I found out that my top-level domain (.me) is considered suspicious for a SpamAssasin and my IP is in the pool of a hoster with not perfect reputation, so I think that was a reason for moving my email to spam in the first month. P.S. using mailcow, I like it for easy installation with an integrated DNS checker tool (it verifies DMARC, DKIM, etc). P.P.S. using external health checks is important to notice when things go wrong, I use Uptime Kuma + Freshping. They can check TCP ports and even write some commands to the TCP port and check for a string presence in response. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gwillen · 2023-11-05 23:08 I run selfhosted inbound and relay outbound. To me it seems like the best of both worlds, since I have control over my domain and my mailbox, but I don't have delivery problems (for the moment.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gwillen · 2023-11-05 23:10 But the nice thing about that setup is, you're not tied to a specific host. You can have a backup ready to go if anything happens. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PandemicSoul · 2023-11-05 23:16 You’ll see 🤪 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Z8DSc8in9neCnK4Vr · 2023-11-05 23:23 Good thread, I had often heard that one should not do so but never the ins and outs of why. I now have a fuller picture of the possibilities and problems from all perspectives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- XediDC · 2023-11-05 23:36 Yeah, it's possible. If you enjoy it great. But mail....is the absolute last thing I ever want to deal with. (I was an MS Exchange admin around ~1999 and...dear god.) I'll happily pay Zoho $12/year to host my main domain. Then I can use SimpleLogin at 30 /yr to "host" all my other domains and create unlimited aliases on any of them that route to my main box (and route from, if I reply)...so every account is unique and easy to just turn off. (Also handy to create accounts, say for a spouse, forwarding to you, and then change the target to them. Or make up amusing new accounts on the fly IRL when a clerk asks you...) I self host all sorts of other stuff, but emails is on the very bottom of that list. This is r/selfhosted of course, and I'm not saying don't do it...and I would say one should at least take control of it, and ideally host it somewhere you are a customer and not the product -- so pay for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- number5 · 2023-11-05 23:48 You need to constantly/*actively* ask them to remove your IPs from their black/greylist, they can put you on their lists for various trivial reasons like you sent too many emails on the same server within a short period of time; few people marked your emails as spam; etc. That's why in my previous job we used commercial outbound emails services like SendGrid/Mailgun etc. so you can ask them to deal with Microsoft/Proofpoint/etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zSprawl · 2023-11-06 00:26 Stop digging. You’re wrong in this use-case. Learn. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CryptoFarmer1776 · 2023-11-06 00:34 Right on. Yeah I don't get the fear mongering if it's still even a thing in 2023. I have been self hosting email for the past four years, and it's been one of the easier stacks to manage. Probably not an ideal application for newbies, but if you have a good handle on opsec and modern SPF/DKIM/DMARC protocols, it's pretty solid and secure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gnordli · 2023-11-06 00:51 If you don't have a properly configured PTR record and you are on a dynamic IP list, you can forget out self hosting email. You just won't be able to reliably deliver email and there is nothing you can do to fix it. of course, you can send email through your ISPs smtp server, but that can be dicey. My provider routinely dropped emails into the bit bucket with no notification. When I send a direct email, then I can look at the logs to see what is going on. If you use O365 you can do message traces. But when it just gets dropped in the bit bucket that doesn't work for anyone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rollinghunger · 2023-11-06 01:22 Thanks for sharing. It helps to have an honest opinion. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Znuffie · 2023-11-06 01:24 > The trouble is getting it set up so your email is delivered properly in the first place. No. The trouble is figuring out why you could send to gmail/microsoft etc. last month, but you can no longer send it now, even though all the pieces are in place. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Znuffie · 2023-11-06 01:26 > an actually good E-Mail suite (in my case Zimbra OSE) Should we tell him? You aware that... Zimbra OSE is basically dead? And you're kinda screwed if you actually want updates past 31 December 2023? And there's no simple migration path from the binary packages they provide (8.8.x), to self-built 10.x ones? To the point that, IF you actually manage to build them for your OS (oh, surprise, btw, they still haven't added support for newer OS, like Ubuntu 22.04), it's just simpler to recreate everything from scratch? (mailboxes and everything). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Znuffie · 2023-11-06 01:33 > Capitalism doesn't like competition it's literally war for resources. Easy there with the conspiracy theories, boy. The #1 reason is because email traffic is basically 50% or more spam/scam/phishing. You can't trust shit and it's a constant battle to keep spam out of the users mailboxes. I work for a hosting provider, and I think more than 90% of our support tickets are email related. Not because there's an issue with our service, but because users do incredibly stupid shit. Normal users are VERY BAD at writing email. Scammers/Spammers are, turns out, incredibly good at it. "oh, I just decided to send a file called `our_services.docx.pdf` to our client list - 5000+ recipients, why do my mails go to spam now??" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- edthesmokebeard · 2023-11-06 01:52 Yep. Ignore the groupthink. Hosting email is just a thing, there's no mystery to it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BloodyIron · 2023-11-06 02:03 Yes I'm actually aware, thank you. I just didn't want to have to expand my comment on that to include that facet. I'm going to migrate away from it, but it HAS... FACTUALLY... served me well for over a decade. And that is something you cannot disprove. Now that we've established you're telling me something I already know, I'm going to move onto something actually worth doing, as opposed to having to respond to this comment which isn't even actually addressing the merit of what I was saying. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- oloryn · 2023-11-06 02:10 I rather suspect that a lot of those who are running their own email server (like myself) have been doing it for many years, starting back when it was much simpler. We've been able to handle the changes that have occurred gradually, as they've occurred. Tackling all of what is now required at once is much more difficult. And there's a lot more to be learned, all at once. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gentoorax · 2023-11-06 02:20 I thought there was smtp verification hoops you have to jump through nowadays? My uni final year project was a multi email account web client. Email is ancient and the standards for it are well a mess tbf. I've considered self hosting email though as I like enterprise features but I don't like paying ha. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Discommodian · 2023-11-06 02:58 I tried to self host but my ISP blocks port 25 and I am not sure if there is a way around that ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedditSlayer2020 · 2023-11-06 03:45 Nice story bro. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thegreatcerebral · 2023-11-06 03:52 Ok so my $0.02 here. I ran a self hosted Exchange server that was upgraded from 5.5 all the way up to 2019 over the years ON-PREM! This included moving to a SAN and my Exchange backups were just over 12 TB before the company was sold. You are right OP, email is just like every other service, you setup the service, forward the ports and it works. I would technically say you cheated by running a container in your Synology but meh. I for sure think it depends on your use case and what you want to get out of email and who you are supporting. If it is a business and you are talking exchange then it’s not usually so much the server it’s the licensing and the setup isn’t always fun. Do you have all your DNS records created (DMARC etc.)? It’s just one of those things that if you are reliant on email then it can just blow up for who knows why like others have said. But yes it is entirely doable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Alfagun74 · 2023-11-06 06:48 !RemindMe 6 months ---------------------------------------------------------------------- justinrlloyd · 2023-11-06 06:57 I have a server in a rack in a data center that I configured pretty much from scratch for everything that has my self-hosted email that supports me, my family, a few businesses, several non-profits. That server acts as the primary email system. And because I have so many personal email addresses, I also host Synology Mail on my NAS, which acts as an aggregation point for all those email addresses. I spend maybe an hour a year, if that, tweaking my mail server settings. Now that I think about it, I cannot honestly remember the last time I had to login to do any maintenance on the mail server itself. It just happily hums away in the background doing its thing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zandadoum · 2023-11-06 07:11 Managed onprem imap, pop, smtp and exchange for several clients for 12y Never doing that again. Thx but no thx. You hosted mail for 6 month without problems? Big fucking deal. Do you even have other users or is it just you? Come back when you host 200 users and one of them got a virus, managed to get your server ip blacklisted in 50 places and all in a span of 4h a Sunday night. Good luck. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- txTxAsBzsdL5 · 2023-11-06 13:19 I did more or less the same thing a few years ago and it's ben working very well. Mine had a few differences, mostly made possible by letting someone else handle outbound mail since my ISP allows inbound on port 25 but not outbound: 1. No need for static IP, just use DDNS and add that to your MX record instead of an IP 2. I used the basic Synology Mail Server 3-5 basically the same ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NonyaDB · 2023-11-06 13:45 Having built and managed many email servers both in the private and public sector, I didn't want that particular hell at home. My solution was to just use ProtonMail. It handles my domain's email. If someone were to break into my place and steal everything, or the property burns to the ground, I still have my email. The added encryption and off-shoring is just a bonus. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- toehser · 2023-11-06 14:09 Well, I was someone who wanted as a professional technologist to be very good at everything and loves Linux, so I've always hosted my own DNS and email and web servers, but I will say it is a pain now that services are restricting static IPS to business accounts that cost twice as much. I run exim and dovecot and spamassassin, with a real certificate, on a VMware Linux under a real Linux, with a raid 5 array, and I run my dns/bind on an open wrt router directly, and I know how to make good backups. I would say it is fine if you want to understand everything, either for personal or professional reasons, but it is in many ways a pain in the ass let's be real. Do you understand dkim? MX records? It is My jam but I wouldn't wholeheartedly recommend it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Herobrine__Player · 2023-11-06 15:02 I am also someone who hosts a email server and it has been going very well for me. I personally had to rent a server since my ISP blocks port 25 even though I have a static IP (for free) so I pay like $12/month, but this means I get VPS reliability. The server's uptime is over 200 days and it has worked flawlessly without issue for over 500 days (though was rebooted due to me not realizing fail2ban or whatever it is was setup) & after the first week or 2 haven't had issues with being put in junk folders. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kmisterk · 2023-11-06 18:37 ## Message Removed Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated. Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary. We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfh osted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.re ddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/17o6s12/-/k7y70uk/\)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kmisterk · 2023-11-06 18:38 ## Message Removed Harassment, abuse, insults, expletives, or other negative comments or posts *targeting a person* is absolutely not tolerated. Bigotry, excessive elitism, and intentionally-demeaning dialogue will also be removed as deemed necessary. We aim to promote an inclusive, yet constructive community that helps people group. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/selfh osted&subject=Removed for Rule 3&message=[Removed Post](https://www.re ddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/17o6s12/-/k7ww41g/\)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -Smokin- · 2023-11-06 19:16 TBF, starting with a clean IP and using proprietary software is like starting on 2nd base. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dreniarb · 2023-11-06 19:49 The video he linked to covers that stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Romanmir · 2023-11-07 00:06 Oh, you sweet summer child. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kuzared · 2023-11-07 09:11 I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, but just in case you're not, that's exactly what I'm saying. Life's too short to deal with on-prem email (and dealing with users that goes along with it - you're responsible for every email that for some reason didn't go through). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DubDubz · 2023-11-07 12:16 Yeah, also a sysadmin that has on prem for a few years. Never want to need to reboot the server because the database was full ever again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeatPicky310 · 2023-11-08 18:00 At least for a mail server if the server is offline you will be missing incoming mail (the sender will receive an undeliverable message but it won't retry automatically) I was just curious about the second one because TP seems experienced with self-hosting for over 20 years and having a compromised server is a common risk. Even if the server is fully patched, there are 0-days means vulnerabilities are not patched yet in the up-to-date patched servers. And there are sometimes automatic update would fail and keep failing without manual intervention. I wasn't really meant to question the OP, but rather trying to learn something new. But it might have come off differently for different people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- du_ra · 2023-11-08 18:05 > At least for a mail server if the server is offline you will be missing incoming mail (the sender will receive an undeliverable message but it won't retry automatically) That's wrong. A server which is not available will be retried until a certain time, usually some days or a week. The sender may receive an information about this after some time to inform that it is not delivered. You only get an instant error message if the server says that this message will not be accepted and you should not retry (SMTP Errorcodes 5xx). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMTP_server_return_codes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeatPicky310 · 2023-11-08 18:05 Thank you for the detailed answer, it is a good reference for me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- flupowder · 2023-11-17 03:54 Are you using brevo smtp replay? How do you set it up on Synology? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KervyN · 2023-11-23 07:51 Today I learned that there is something new to use: arc Looks like a srs replacement. Google mentioned it in their policy for sending to them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KervyN · 2023-11-23 07:59 If you are happy with it, don't look at the mailop ml https://www.mail-archive.com/mailop@mailop.org/ And be sure to not join https://spammers.dontlike.us/mailman/listinfo/list I've been on this list for years while I selfhosted my mail and maintained a huge internet facing mailrelay for a larger company. IP reputation was not an issue (own /22 network) also no problem with AS reputation (yes, thats a thing and the fuckers at uceprotect will ban a whole AS when they want to) I have seen the most stupid stuff in existence. Glad it works for you. I stopped when my hair started to lose its color after >10yrs of experience. Email is very important to me. I use it for everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KervyN · 2023-11-23 08:06 Don't you guys have a secure way for the 2FA? Mail sounds awful. My bank requires a separate app, that needs to be activated via snail mail token and cannot be moved to a new phone. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zaTricky · 2023-11-23 09:04 Many banks are still in the previous Century :-| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KervyN · 2023-11-23 10:14 ouch!