[drunner]

Customer for a few years now. I don't do anything fancy with it. It was the cheapest and most appealing option for a custom domain for personal email. I think it runs me ~$11 a year or something

I combine it with simplelogin to handle all my aliasing needs.

Thanks for the great service.

[77pt77]

How is deliverability?

Because for $11/year you can get a simple kvm machine and run your own servers.

[Imustaskforhelp]

I have heard this a lot of times but self hosting email is one of the hardest things to do , sure if you are masochist then do it , but if you are a working functional part of society , not recommended.

[micw]

I really have an issue with that.

On the one hand, it's just wrong. Self-hosting mail is not easy because you need to learn how things work. But it's far from being "one of the hardest things to do", even in the domain of hosting things. A properly set up mail server will seamlessly send mails to almost any other MTA. The only large exception is microsoft. The abuse their market power by black-list all new MTAs by default until you create a ticket to "mitigate" this and they tend to re-blacklist small MTAs from time to time.

On the other hand, it's that kind of statements that worsen the situation. People should be encouraged to set up their own MTAs and provided with help to do it in a good professional way. It's one important part of keeping the mail part internet free and not in the hand of few large companies.

[technothrasher]

> The only large exception is microsoft.

Comcast also gives me no end of annoyance by repeatedly black-listing my server for no apparent reason. The process goes: get blocked, request reason, get a hand shrug and unblock, rinse and repeat.

[micw]

There should be a blocklist for MTAs that blocks others for no reason and all "free" MTA should use these to put a little pressure on those.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Agreed , I don't know two things about mail (use proton mail) , but I don't own any servers .

But I still self host stuff using docker (shiori etc.)

I mean , see there is a difference in complexity.

Like if you want to self host supabase , its complex , but its still automatable by a docker compose.

About Mails?? I am just not sure! , Maybe I shouldn't have expressed this opinion on the internet. I was just regurtitating what I heard from r/selfhosted feeds about email where they constantly said this. They even provided some explaination (see the message to which I said "this!!" , because that's what I meant.

Maybe even what you said about microsoft. But still , I really really don't want to take any risks with the mail , like what if a critical message of email doesn't come? I don't even want to know!!

I personally just believe that due to these reasons , that mail is just an old wagon which is riding into the future. I personally would prefer mail alternatives like xmpp / (preferably matrix!!)

I know matrix self hosting can take quite some resources but I do believe that the protocol in my honest opinion could be much more better for self hosting.

Just my two cents.

[bhaney]

> self hosting email is one of the hardest things to do

I spent an hour setting up postfix and some milters on a Digital Ocean droplet around 7 years ago and it's been working fine as my personal email server with no deliverability issues or maintenance since then. I ssh in every few years to try out a new spam filter or something and maybe upgrade some packages if I feel like it. These days there are even easier mail-in-a-box style turnkey deployments that work just as well but don't need as much knowledge or setup as bare postfix.

At this point, the biggest barrier to self-hosting email is the deafening cries of people who don't know what they're talking about parroting how impossible it is to do.

[Kwpolska]

Setting up a mail server isn't hard. Making it trustworthy enough for Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook.com to accept your messages and not put them in the spam folder is the hard part. Especially if whoever had your IP address previously was sending spam.

[bhaney]

In my experience, every large provider except Microsoft will default to delivering your emails to the destination inbox unless your mails actually look like spam, you incorrectly set up a verification mechanism like SPF or DKIM, or your IP has a bad reputation (which usually only comes with sketchy hosting providers, as good ones will quickly cut off spam coming from their network). Microsoft was well known at the time for having the extremely annoying policy of just automatically blackhole-ing any new mail server until you contacted them and got yourself whitelisted. I did that when I first set up my mail server and got a response the next day saying I was whitelisted. No idea if they still have that policy, and I've never had to do it for any other host.

But like I said, I've put very little effort into this and have no problem getting into my recipients' inboxes with all major mail providers.

[Imustaskforhelp]

This!

[abdullahkhalids]

I installed Mailinabox [1] four years ago. There was one annoying upgrade, whose process needs to improved, but outside of that haven't touched anything. Only a couple of random domains where email delivery has failed. Otherwise, it just delivers to all the big providers.

[1] https://mailinabox.email/

[NetOpWibby]

That annoying upgrade is the reason I’m planning on moving to Stalwart[1]. I’m still on the old MiaB version and I’ve always been interested in JMAP (which Stalwart supports)

[1]: https://stalw.art

[MrDrMcCoy]

As someone that's self-hosted email for years, I don't think it's that hard. There's plenty of great solutions that make it easy. Sure, there are footguns, but they are well known and easy to avoid.

[jimmydoe]

your time worth a lot more.

[anshargal]

there are not a lot of options to get a virtual server under $1 per month, especially with IPv4 address

[selcuka]

RackNerd offers one for $10.99 a year [1]. I've used them before and they are a solid provider. Besides you can use the same server and same IPv4 address for hosting multiple email domains.

[1] https://vncoupon.com/black-friday-racknerd-huge-savings-spec...

[77pt77]

15 USD or EUR a year is almost trivial.

It will have more than enough resources for SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, and even a personal VPN.

It's really not difficult.

The problem is that most IPs will be tainted and unless you are a major player, email deliverability sucks.

That's why I asked, because these guys were unknown to me.

[TZubiri]

Are you insinuating 11$/yr is too expensive for the service lmao.

It's so cheap people probably don't buy it because it will go bankrupt.

[xigoi]

What do you need SimpleLogin for? Purelymail supports aliases on its own.

[drunner]

I still prefer to shield my domain and inboxes. Probably a silly exercise, but I like knowing that no one can spam my true inbox or domain as its never given out.