[rwl4]

Somewhat related story time! In the early 2000's my main business was web hosting. It paid the bills but never made me enough to really invest in it. So it kept running, sitting in a colocation space. In 2005, having the mail server hosted on my web server was becoming a problem, so I decided to put it on a new server.

I chose a 1.42Ghz Power PC Mac Mini. I installed Linux, and was very happy with how well it worked, how tiny it was, and how it took a fraction of the the rack space that my web server and other servers took. I thought I might even just use those in the future.

Fast forward a couple years, and the load started increasing. I had used XFS for the mail partition, it ran Qmail and used used Maildirs which tended to accumulate thousands of files per mail directory, and the server was starting to choke. I also avoided rebooting it for years. If I remember correctly, by the end, the server had an 6 year uptime because I was so scared that rebooting it might brick it. But I had a major problem: this Qmail+Vpopmail+SpamAssassin+[dozens of custom tweaks] install had accumulated so many custom hacks, tweaks and patches that I never had confidence that I could do a real downtime-free cut over to a new system without a barrage of complaints.

So I put it off. And I put it off. Fast forward to about 2013 and I decided enough was enough, so instead of doing a fraught cut-over, I just ended email service. Problem solved. Best choice I ever made.

Needless to say, I avoid overly complex, patched configs now.

[mhdhn]

Weren't your customers annoyed?

[MengerSponge]

The main application of small self-hosted email services is getting your messages blocked by Google/Microsoft as a service.

[uraniumjelly]

That ideally shouldn't happen if your dkim, dmarc and spf check out, though. I hosted my own email for a couple of years and I can't remember a single time when my emails to my friends ended up in spam.

[sneak]

"ideally shouldn't happen" doesn't mean the deliverability cartel doesn't block you anyway.

Gmail et al have been spam filtering messages from correctly configured mail servers for a decade+ now. All the dkim, dmarc, and spf in the world won't help you if you aren't known to them.

[systems_glitch]

Pretty sure it's part of the plan. If you're hosting your own mail in 2023, you are the resistance.

[MengerSponge]

More like plenty of spam comes from correctly configured servers.

[megous]

How are these HAM signals? Any spammer can set these things up. dkim/spf are just mildly useful anti-spoofing technologies.

Google and others will happily block your mail or send it to spam folder even if you never sent one SPAM email ever, and have all those technologies you mentioned set up.

[no_time]

What made you stop hosting your email?

[uraniumjelly]

I realized I wouldn't use it for anything serious, and I didn't renew my domain name. Maybe someday I'll get a domain for ten years and then get google to host the actual email. That way it doesn't matter too much if google decides to nuke my account.

I was also sixteen when I did that, so I mean, of course I wasn't going to do anything serious with it.

[psunavy03]

Blame the assholes who try to phish Karen in accounting via "rnicrosoft.com" or similar.

[systems_glitch]

Unfortunate reality. I stopped self-hosting after many years three or four years ago. Keeping up with the requirements to stay out of the spam bin was too much work, and the risks of non-delivery were too high.

Remember, even if you have everything 100% nailed down with SPF, DKIM, etc. you can still end up on a random blacklist, some of which are basically extortion shakedowns. Now, you can say, "well ignore those losers, who cares?" but sometimes you have a customer who directly or indirectly relies on those blacklists. I certainly do, that's how I found out!

[canadianfella]

> so instead of doing a fraught cut-over, I just ended email service.

That’s awful.