Self-hosted email is the hardest it's ever been, but also the easiest

Re:Self-hosted email is the hardest it's ever been, but also... by mrb on Monday September 05, 2022 @03:28AM (#32721507)

But Carlos did not do "all that". He said he tried VPS servers, not dedicated servers. Maybe that's his problem. VPS servers tend to have IP addresses with low reputation, whereas dedicated servers tend to have higher reputation IPs.

Deliverability really depend on solid reputation of IP address blocks, including reputation of your neighbors. Ideally you want an IP near other IPs who also send high volume of non-spam.

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Re:Self-hosted email is the hardest it's ever been, but also... by denton-scratch on Monday September 05, 2022 @04:58AM (#32722015)

I used to self-host, on my home internet connection, for 20 years. I used ISPs that were email-friendly, and gave me clean IPs. I started out with Sendmail, but switched to Postfic/Dovecot after a few years.

I stopped a couple of years ago, and moved my mail to my ISPs servers (they let me use my own domain). I switched because of the hassle of keeping the thing up, backing-up the mailstore and so on; and because I was moving home, so I wanted a service that couldn't be knocked-out by the move. Not because of any deliverability issues. I haven't had deliverability issues since about 2010, and those were probably because I couldn't be bothered with DMARC.

My ISP is a niche outfit, targeted at nerds; their mailservers are Postfix/Dovecot, which suits me. They support Sieve, and they have a control panel with various knobs and buttons. As an ISP they're a bit pricey, but for email hosting they're cheap.

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