[mhurron]

I run my own mail server for my personal mail at home off my DSL line. Most blacklists will block residential IP ranges, but it is easy to get around that. You can simply set up a smart relay to another SMTP server, probably your ISP's. When your mail server sends mail to the outside, world, it doesn't send directly to the recipient's mail server, it sends it to your ISP, and they relay it out.

[phunel]

Thank you. This seems like a fair tradeoff. In my case I imagine I'd just use my VPS as the relay, rather than my ISP. Just so I understand clearly, incoming mail will not be an issue and can be sent directly to your personal box, but relay the outgoing via your established ISP/VPS/etc?

[mhurron]

Exactly. Mail to you goes to where ever your DNS MX record is pointing to (obviously in my case that is my home IP) and local delivery is configured how ever you choose to do local delivery. Sending is simply configured how ever smart relaying is configured on your MTA of choice. All mail sent from your MTA is sent directly to your smart relay and goes out to the world from there.

There is a trusted type of relationship between your MTA and the smart relay so the smart relay is not set up as an open relay. If your smart relay is an open relay, it may end up on blacklists as well, for different reasons than originating from a residential IP block.