Anyone out there run their own mail server? Any advice to ensure deliverability when self hosting?
Discussion
Unfortunately most of that is up to the receiving end of an email. Not much you can do. If they don't get your email, run a dns check on there mail server and see if it's blocking your mail server ip address. If so , they will need to contact there mail hosting provider and unblock it. I used to do web hosting and email hosting tech support for Hostopia.
there are some good threads over on hn:
Don't use tor. Lol
You could run multiple mx records if you wanted, prob don't need to tho. You'll need to make sure you have proper dns ptr record for it. I'd recommend postfix. The time consuming stuff is giving users access w imap and etc, managing users, mail formats.
I ran my own server - it was a disaster. Deliverability to corporate emails would often get blocked. And then that block flag would get propagated to the black list of many other corporate admins.
I would never try doing this again if deliverability is important 😜
Do you have DKIM and SPF configured on the domain? I don’t self-host, but I do a lot of troubleshooting and those two are often the culprit when it comes to deliverability.
Trying to decide if I should even go down this route considering everyone uses Gmail. If Gmail decides it doesn't like my domain, nobody in my company can send email 😅
I’m interested in a more decentralized email alternative if it’s feasible to be done.
Many have tried over the decades. All have failed.
Email is such a clusterfuck
Of all the surviving protocols from the early internet, email is the worst.
One of my favorite reads from Lopp that explains a lot of it. Also a cautionary tail for future decentralized protocols (like Nostr).
Lopp blog is A+ content across the board. I’ve read this one too and it’s great.
Honestly, that’s why I use Google Workspace for my business email. It’s just easy. It’s always deliverable, they give you the correct mx, spf, and dkim entries, and the spam filtering is unmatched. OAuth to easily connect your email through other platforms (in my case, to sent deliverable mail direct from websites) is also nice.
As an avid hater of email, I read that when #[4] first published it. Great read, he’s spot-on.
Who remembers when people utilized Pop protocol for incoming mail. Such a disaster.
I self host a mail server. Its not hard. Make sure dkim, spf, and dmarc is set properly or you will have issues. I went as far as setting up DNSSEC as well.
If nothing else its good experince.
