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Comment by creshal | Hacker News Reader

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creshal

Email reputation is a complex topic, but generally as long as you

• don't use an IP range classified as "consumer" (known dynamic IP DSL/cable ranges)

• set up SPF

• set up DKIM

• don't send actual spam

…it generally gets through. Mox is so far the easiest solution for SPF/DKIM I've seen, but if you don't mind spending a weekend tinkering, it should be solveable with any email stack.

> In some cases, websites weren't even allowing email registration with a self-hosted email.

I never ran into that issue. Not much you can do there, other than writing the owner angry emails via gmail.

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I did all of this when self hosting for a few years. It was mostly fine, but for a couple of undelivered emails. Those were just enough that I lost trust in the system and eventually stopped running my own email.

People mostly expect email to be fully reliable. It’s not, but that doesn’t stop people treating it like that. As a result, even if you only fail to deliver 1 in 1000 emails, that could have significant consequences. Gmail et. al have a high enough deliverability rate that most people can get away with treating it as reliable.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t self host, but I think they need to be very aware of how it will change their trust of email.

This sums up the problem quite nicely.

IMO, what needs to happen is for people to see the 1 in 1000 as a problem with Gmail et al. rather than a problem with someone hosting their own STMP server.

Generally speaking, people I know who self-host their email do not have problems. However, inevitably there is the 1 in 1000. IMO, unreached recipients using Gmail et al. are likely to see the problem as with the self-hosted sender, not their own third party email provider.

One idea is to have a backup for emergencies. That is, a Gmail user could have an alternative, self-hosted means of receiving email on port 587 or 2525. By default, this mail drop accepts mail from no one. When there's a 1 in 1000 problem, the recipient could add the sender to a list of acceptable senders, either temporaily or permanently. The sender can then use the alternative instead of Gmail.

To be honest, in the last 20 years or so of self-hosting emails, the most common failure points were

• Gmail marked an email as spam, but still delivered it. Easily cleared up, no hard feelings on either side.

• Someone else self-hosts some abysmally maintained Exchange 2003 setup that just about barely works with GMail and Office365, after the MSP irresponsible for it gets enough verbal beatings. Impossible to get to work.

Your right, but email is never fully reliable. How many times have you lost things into your gmail/outlook/etc's spam folder?

And with the amount of genuine spam being sent FROM GMAIL to my backup gmail address, it's unthinkable to actually check through the spam folder with any regularity.

> In some cases, websites weren't even allowing email registration with a self-hosted email.

I've seen that once or twice, but it was because my self-hosted is on a .one domain. There are (not surprisingly) a few organisations out there that validate against the old set of top-level domains (.com, .net, etc, and the country codes). They just won't accept any of the new top-levels as real!!

> don't use an IP range classified as "consumer" (known dynamic IP DSL/cable ranges)

How can you tell if the IP you use is or has been in one of those ranges?

I think "consumer" is being contrasted with a business contract offering static ip.

You should know because it is currently blocked - found by using mxtoolbox.com for example.

Or, suspect it will be because the ip to your residence is not a designated static ip. (In practice it may be ipv6 and never changes but applying a PTR to the ip requires assistance from the ISP and it would likely be outside of the contract.)

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