Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by clairity on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:42PM
(#31183254)
the spam problem advantages google, as your own story illustrates, so it's unlikely they'd really want to help solve deliverability/spam issues systemicly. making personal email hosting more difficult means they have a chance to capture your email data streams via gmail. whether you switch there or not, it creates a pressure for most to aggregate on gmail, which means they can see most email exchanges.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by wpietri on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @01:48PM
(#31183351)
For sure. Good spam filtering was one big reason for people to switch to GMail. And a lot of people who gave up hosting their own email have switched to Gmail as well. I'm sure this doesn't rise to the level of conspiracy, but there's little incentive for them to fix the broader problems.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by azinman2 on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @06:47PM
(#31186792)
My issue with fast mail et all is storage is so unnecessarily expensive. I have many gigs of email that I don’t want to lose, but I also don’t want to pay many tens of dollars/month to host it.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by maccolgan on Thursday April 28, 2022 @02:12AM
(#31189240)
I use SES just for delivering emails while hosting the emails myself. Feels like an optimal solution.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by selcuka on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @11:30PM
(#31188441)
> I have many gigs of email
> don’t want to pay many tens of dollars/month
How many gigs? It appears that the 100GB plan is only $9/mo.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by azinman2 on Thursday April 28, 2022 @11:52AM
(#31194064)
Whoa. That’s very different from the last time I checked, perhaps they changed either their plans or their structure. I saw it previously as additional storage I’d have to add. 100G would be enough! Wow thank you!
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by Aeolun on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @09:49PM
(#31187947)
Is it? I pay $5 for 50gb, which is many years of email (including all the spam/newsletters, which I really don’t need to keep)
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by twobitshifter on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @07:53PM
(#31187242)
If you have iCloud you have the option of using a custom domain. I think I only pay a few bucks a month.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by azinman2 on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @08:27PM
(#31187467)
For various reasons I’d rather have an indie provider. I’m currently on Google and trying to decentralize my data.
Re:Ask HN: Why can't I host my own email?
by twobitshifter on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @10:15PM
(#31188097)
Ok, if the amount of data is a problem, another option is to just download your mbox from Google takeout, treat it as an archive, and use something like notmuch to search your old mails. You can then store and backup the mbox anywhere you want.
In addition to the iCloud, I have a free ProtonMail account, which I use sparingly, and anything large or important that comes in there I move to local backup and delete. 99% of the messages I get can just be deleted. If you set up pop3 you can auto delete from the server. That’s the old school solution, but it depends on your use case. The pop3 option doesn’t work well with multiple devices.
I hosted my own mail for more than 20 years. A couple years back I just got tired of trying to solve deliverability puzzles, plus the fears that deliverability issues generate. (E.g., "Did that potential employer get my email about the job?") Especially since some of the puzzles are not solvable, like why GMail does what it does. I even had friends at Google, and I still couldn't find out why GMail occasionally didn't like my server. And arguably, that's the right choice for them, as the more spammers know about how they work, the worse it is for Google staff and GMail users.
For me, switching to Fastmail hosting was a big win. It's not like I'm out of technical challenges to solve, but I get to apply that to things where the upside is greater than, "The thing everybody expects to work still works."