This article exaggerates the problem. I’ve been hosting my own email for many years and I have almost zero deliverability obstacles. The advantages of running your own email server are huge.
This is almost certainly false. If this is not false, please do show how you measured your deliverability (across all those years) and how those measurements show "almost no" issues.
I can tell because I also run a mailman mailing list (~500 people) on that same server and domain, I measure initiall discoverability by how many bounces I get (almost always none) and also that the high percentage of read receipts I get, and the fact that engagement with the list is pretty even across domains (IE, people with gmail, outlook, yahoo, and aol emails all frequently read and engage with the list).
> I'm very surprised if the % for gmail and outlook truly is not lower than the % for yahoo and aol, as you indicated.
the distribution of domains is far from even, but I can tell by checking my inbox from today that one of our most frequent posters with an aol domain sent a news article around and it started a thread with multiple gmail users chatting with the original poster about it.
Thats not hard numbers, but everyone on the list has agreed that the list works better on the self hosted server then it did on google groups.
This might be indicative of deliverability issues affecting some domains only.
The fact that some gmail users can see emails doesn't mean 100% of gmail users are delivered your email.
I mean maybe? I remember when we switched from google groups that I checked and the % of opens and that it seemed fairly evenly distributed given that the percentage of gmail users far outweighs the percentage of yahoo/aol users, and to be honest I've not bothered to check much more beyond that point. But the core group of crotchety old folks who frequently send round interesting local stories are a decent mix. The last couple of days I see 4 different gmail accounts, one work domain (that I assume is outlook but might be some other provider), the aforementioned aol account, and the burner riseup account that I use when I am feeling crotchety.
> The fact that some gmail users can see emails doesn't mean 100% of gmail users are delivered your email.
Sure, its possible but I've not seen any evidence of it after we made the transition. I've seen email sent from gmail accounts to gmail accounts not get delivered, expecting 100% is never going to be realistic even with the largest mail providers.
Unless and until I start getting in person complaints (which, trust me, I would if there was a problem) or see people mention emails going into spam, I'm going to keep on keeping on.
Setting all up is complex, but there are project that give all the tools in a Docker container. Since I wanted to learn it I did all manually, and did set up postifx, dovecot, opendkim, postfixadmin and even squirrelmail as a "retro" web interface, with a postgresql database to keep the mailboxes and the accounts. It was an interesting experience, plus now I have full control of the mail system, e.g. I can decide to route the mail in whatever directory just by changing the SQL query that decides in which mailbox a message should be delivered.
I personally did do all of that, and my emails didn't get delivered. I wrote about my experience in detail here: https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-ser...
With DMARC you can specify that the recipient sends you a periodc report of the delivery status, this is useful to debug eventual problems. For example GMail and Outlook send this out, and gives you information about the fact that your DMARC is working correctly and SPF and DKIM checks are passed.
Anyway when you manage to get it working, it did work for around 4 years without any issues. I've even reinstalled the mailserver to another machine (keeping the same IP) and I did not have any issue in the migration.
- Better IMAP support: ProtonMail doesn't support IMAP without the ProtonMail bridge. The ProtonMail bridge was very buggy for me, and I have to self-host it anyways. With self-hosted email, I can just use IMAP normally (yay).
- Better email search: With ProtonMail you can search for keywords in the message body but it doesn't work if you have lots of mail. With self-hosting you can search however you like across as much mail as you like.
- Easier backups: On my self-hosted setup I can configure automated periodic backups. I don't think that's possible on ProtonMail.
- Cost: ProtonMail is really expensive :(
The main reason I switched was the IMAP part. I just got tired of the bridge bugs.
Also if you're already paying for IP service, there is no technical reason you should have to pay an email provider. Email standards and software are all open and free.
Yes, you can log the crap out of "$Server.$OtherProvider.$TLD accepted $MessageID for delivery" - but that doesn't stop $OtherProvider from failing to deliver it to the recipient's IN box.
Custom filtering/sorting.
Easy burner addresses.
Custom reader tracking for marketing.
Custom reader db response pattern mailouts/campaigns.
Some of these are Some Assembly Required, but they're hard/impossible/expensive to do with 3rd party mailers.
I can create as many alias, mailboxes I prefer.
Overall the freedom is soothing.
I to have never had emails denied but then again I'm using colocation based hosting, so my IP block is one that's never been used before.
For this reason I can have a different address for each service that I register with, for example facebook@domain, and thus easily block services that start spamming out, and even know if a service leaks my address without authorization.
Yes, I know that GMail has a similar feature (by using address+whatever@gmail.com) but some sites blocks it, and still you don't have that ability to have a completely different address, that if one day you want can become its own mailbox.
Another reason is that commercial email services started blocking the simple SMTP/IMAP authentication with username/password, making it difficult, if not impossible, to configure a server them to send email trough GMail or Outlook, or a service to subscribe trough IMAP subscription to the mailbox to trigger an action when a mail arrives. Proton even decided not to support plain SMTP/IMAP, and you need a bridge to use it!
All my systems, being them servers or services that run on them, are configured to send the email trough my server, and the configuration is super easy. So that, for example, I'm notified if a cron job fails (basically the mail to the local Linux users gets routed to my server) or I have my Home Assistant installation notify me trough email.
Next I manage different domains, and I can have all that domains in a single central mail server. That allows to manage the mail of different systems in a central place, and with a single account. As far as I know this is not possible with commercial services: what you can do is of course to have one system forward the mail to another, but to send the mail as another domain with the same mailbox? With my mailserver I can, I just configure multipe FROM addresses in Thunderbird.
Finally on my server I don't have a limit on the number of accounts/mailbox, so I create an account/mailbox for whatever reason I want in two seconds, for a fixed montly cost (of around 10 euros, since I use the smallest AWS EC2 that they have available)
As you see, there are plenty of reasons to have your own mail service.
And, and let's conclude with: I've lost more mails thanks to antispam in commercial email software such as Outlook or GMail, that on my own server. I don't care about spam, I (if needed) know how to filter it out client-side. I don't want systems to refuse or even hide messages to me, something GMail and Outlook does.
I do not intend to ever give up on this.
I had problems in the past, mainly with Microsoft, but they were not insurmountable.
The worst problems with delivery have been a few years ago, I had less problems recently.