Interesting that self-hosting isn't on his list. It hits every one of his checkboxes and only costs you an old Linux server collecting dust at home (or at most, a $5/mo VPS), which you can also use to host other things.
It's never been easier to self-host, but it feels like, in general, when faced with "I want to do X with a computer," people are more and more reaching for paid, hosted services rather than DIY anymore.
Isnt email blacklisting/actually getting mails to inbox infamously hard? I otherwise think the rest of the stack is indeed solved, but its probably cheaper to pay Amazon SES or whatever for getting your emails to an inbox reliably
Everyone has the same problem. For example, Apple recently blocked a service that notifies you of parliamentary documents (source in Dutch: <a href="https://chaos.social/@tkdocs@mastodon.nl/117370967171338864" rel="nofollow">https://chaos.social/@tkdocs@mastodon.nl/117370967171338864)
Email receivers (be it Gmail or your local council) don't differentiate if you're self hosting or a business. So long as small businesses can manage (who have like one part-time sysadmin that also manages a ton of other IT stuff; email doesn't take much of their time), so can you. If you set up the usual suspects like SPF and DMARC, the domain is not a known spammer, and the IP not in a blocked address range, it's mostly hands-off (source: I self host my email)
If you need it to really be super reliable, yeah, you need to send through one of the big companies who have not just a dedicated sending IP address but entire ranges dedicated to email sending, as well as staff that will respond to delivery issues 24/7. Microsoft rejecting email from Google and vice versa isn't unheard of, so there aren't guarantees anywhere, but that would be your best bet. For my personal use, that extra nine of reliability isn't needed
I’ve actually tried before to self host on my VPS as well as my homelab that I use for various services. I honestly just didn’t trust the stability of my own services enough for something as important as email. As a project I definitely want to try again in the future.
Email is ridiculously resilient to downtime. Exam, for example, will retry by default for several days before giving up on delivering a message.
Even if you don't actively monitor your server and only notice there's a problem after three days of not getting any mail, odds are you'll still receive most of them after fixing the issue.
I haven't spent any real amount of time looking into this, but from the basic research I did perform, I found that well-written guides that aren't grossly out of date are hard to find.
Also, my understanding is that Google, Outlook and other major email services have been implementing as many roadblocks for self-hosted setups as possible to the point where it's a constant battle and difficult to keep up with.
It depends a lot on whether you need the account for reading email, sending email to your own accounts, or sending email to other people. The first two are very easy to self-host.
But agreed that mass-mailing (even account registration style emails) seems a lot less reliable because of those spam filters.
it's only "difficult" because google, microsoft, etc have conivenced the community that self-hosting e-mail is not possible and for some reason, further propetuated by IT influencers that have drank that koolaid.
all complete bullshit; they arbitrraly occasionally block to protect their moat raping privacy. e-mail is the most rewarding self-hosting capability. like anything, there is a learning curve but at the end of the day: it's easy, stable, a pleasure to host. there are solutions that ease the learning curve. after a while, all the e-mail do make it through.
i'm so happy that my communications are not indexed by these hyperscalers.
stop listening to these pussies claiming how difficult it is. they're projecting their limitations.
It didn't help that people are seemingly more offended about the possibility of spam on their inbox than on losing a valuable email due to misclassification.
There's little to no incentive for providers to ever de-escalate.
At my day job, we use Gsuite. I never used it for any non-work purpose, and it wasn't publically published, so any "spam" it got was false positives. Emails I actually needed were being buried below the fold in the spam folder. It turns out there is no obvious way to 100% disable spam filtering (at the time I got the first false-positive at least) so I had to try to just allowlist things that should be left alone.
I've tried this approach, but I found that most email providers aggressively filter out all incoming messages that don't come from validated sources. No matter what I tried deliverability of emails remained very spotty. I did configure DKIM, DMARC, SPIF, etc as suggested. But minimal improvements. Eventually ended up going with AWS SES.
I've had surprisingly good luck the few times I've tried it - but using VPSs that were a bit more spendy and not known to be spamhavens helped, I think.
The cost of something like AWS SES or Postmark is so low as to make it almost not worth it, but it worked; not that I'd trust "real" email to it - but I was surprised that Wordpress setup emails were getting through with little config.
So, there are two main reasons people avoid trying to self-host email, plus a third you only find once you start digging:
1. Deliverability: "the email mafia will flag your emails as spam"
2. Complexity: "configuring and maintaining a mail stack is a technical nightmare".
3. Network blocks: VPS providers and residential ISPs frequently block outbound mail ports (like port 25) entirely or in their terms of use.
I decided we should try self-hosting because some issues with their reliability cost us very expensive problems.
The experience was frustrating anyway, as the weird restrictions on providers caused our setup to be quite bad on some regards -- most notably being forced to use the provider UI to manage some things, which took time and is a non-transferable useless skill, not having users for things that should have had one, etc.
MailCow made the technical setup trivial, blowing objection #2 out.
For #3, we could not rely on stable electricity/internet, so we just spun it up on a reliable VPS provider after a small research.
As for the biggest fear, the IP reputation and deliverability mafia (#1), it is easily solved by routing outbound mail through a simple SMTP relay like SMTP2GO.
You pay based purely on sending volume rather than a flat service fee, and their free tier completely covers small setups.
And how much time did it take? Less than half a day, before AI could do everything for you.
Most paid services charge absurd per-user or per-domain fees for basic features that do not cost them anything.
After 2 years of bad service on paid providers followed by 2 years of flawless self-hosting, there is absolutely no going back.
I self-host email, and it's mostly working. However the problems others have outlined are real: The stack is complicated, even for an expert to set up and keep running. And deliverability can sometimes be a problem, especially to Google who are obviously plotting to monopolise email.
I've been self-hosting (using a server at home) using MailInABox ( <a href="https://mailinabox.email" rel="nofollow">https://mailinabox.email ) for around 5 years.
I've been very happy with it. I have a perfectly normal email service, over which I have full control. MailInABox handles all the necessary DKIM etc. I had minor hassles, when I first started, with sending to google and microsoft, but these were reasonably easily managed by following microsoft's advice. (And I have a good ISP.)
The only hassle is that, because MailInABox uses greylisting, initial account-validation emails are sometimes delayed. But because I have control of the service, I can whitelist anything important :)
ryandrake · · focus · HN ↗
It's never been easier to self-host, but it feels like, in general, when faced with "I want to do X with a computer," people are more and more reaching for paid, hosted services rather than DIY anymore.
tough · · focus · HN ↗
lucb1e · · focus · HN ↗
Email receivers (be it Gmail or your local council) don't differentiate if you're self hosting or a business. So long as small businesses can manage (who have like one part-time sysadmin that also manages a ton of other IT stuff; email doesn't take much of their time), so can you. If you set up the usual suspects like SPF and DMARC, the domain is not a known spammer, and the IP not in a blocked address range, it's mostly hands-off (source: I self host my email)
If you need it to really be super reliable, yeah, you need to send through one of the big companies who have not just a dedicated sending IP address but entire ranges dedicated to email sending, as well as staff that will respond to delivery issues 24/7. Microsoft rejecting email from Google and vice versa isn't unheard of, so there aren't guarantees anywhere, but that would be your best bet. For my personal use, that extra nine of reliability isn't needed
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
jgx0 · · focus · HN ↗
probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
Even if you don't actively monitor your server and only notice there's a problem after three days of not getting any mail, odds are you'll still receive most of them after fixing the issue.
probably_wrong · · focus · HN ↗
zeeveener · · focus · HN ↗
Also, my understanding is that Google, Outlook and other major email services have been implementing as many roadblocks for self-hosted setups as possible to the point where it's a constant battle and difficult to keep up with.
cosmotic · · focus · HN ↗
handoflixue · · focus · HN ↗
But agreed that mass-mailing (even account registration style emails) seems a lot less reliable because of those spam filters.
waynesonfire · · focus · HN ↗
all complete bullshit; they arbitrraly occasionally block to protect their moat raping privacy. e-mail is the most rewarding self-hosting capability. like anything, there is a learning curve but at the end of the day: it's easy, stable, a pleasure to host. there are solutions that ease the learning curve. after a while, all the e-mail do make it through.
i'm so happy that my communications are not indexed by these hyperscalers.
stop listening to these pussies claiming how difficult it is. they're projecting their limitations.
hakfoo · · focus · HN ↗
There's little to no incentive for providers to ever de-escalate.
At my day job, we use Gsuite. I never used it for any non-work purpose, and it wasn't publically published, so any "spam" it got was false positives. Emails I actually needed were being buried below the fold in the spam folder. It turns out there is no obvious way to 100% disable spam filtering (at the time I got the first false-positive at least) so I had to try to just allowlist things that should be left alone.
GianFabien · · focus · HN ↗
bombcar · · focus · HN ↗
The cost of something like AWS SES or Postmark is so low as to make it almost not worth it, but it worked; not that I'd trust "real" email to it - but I was surprised that Wordpress setup emails were getting through with little config.
david_sluijs · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
woolion · · focus · HN ↗
1. Deliverability: "the email mafia will flag your emails as spam"
2. Complexity: "configuring and maintaining a mail stack is a technical nightmare".
3. Network blocks: VPS providers and residential ISPs frequently block outbound mail ports (like port 25) entirely or in their terms of use.
I decided we should try self-hosting because some issues with their reliability cost us very expensive problems. The experience was frustrating anyway, as the weird restrictions on providers caused our setup to be quite bad on some regards -- most notably being forced to use the provider UI to manage some things, which took time and is a non-transferable useless skill, not having users for things that should have had one, etc.
MailCow made the technical setup trivial, blowing objection #2 out. For #3, we could not rely on stable electricity/internet, so we just spun it up on a reliable VPS provider after a small research. As for the biggest fear, the IP reputation and deliverability mafia (#1), it is easily solved by routing outbound mail through a simple SMTP relay like SMTP2GO. You pay based purely on sending volume rather than a flat service fee, and their free tier completely covers small setups. And how much time did it take? Less than half a day, before AI could do everything for you.
Most paid services charge absurd per-user or per-domain fees for basic features that do not cost them anything. After 2 years of bad service on paid providers followed by 2 years of flawless self-hosting, there is absolutely no going back.
rwmj · · focus · HN ↗
drpixie · · focus · HN ↗
I've been very happy with it. I have a perfectly normal email service, over which I have full control. MailInABox handles all the necessary DKIM etc. I had minor hassles, when I first started, with sending to google and microsoft, but these were reasonably easily managed by following microsoft's advice. (And I have a good ISP.)
The only hassle is that, because MailInABox uses greylisting, initial account-validation emails are sometimes delayed. But because I have control of the service, I can whitelist anything important :)
subscribed · · focus · HN ↗
I self hosted my email domains for 15+ years. Finally got fed up with the constant trickle of the maintenance and got a service for everything.
Not quite happy with that as they don't even do SRS (implying they do), but i guess I'll just migrate elsewhere.
The upside is I've got more time for myself and have less CVEs to worry about.
Self hosted apps migration in progress; I guess I'll leave media, book and file server only, off the internet, and that's it.