[drnick1]

I run my own email server and you couldn't pay me to use a commercial provider like Google instead. The privacy benefits are huge and there is no one to restrict my storage or change my "terms and conditions" overnight.

The days of people running their own servers are gone because of the shortsightedness and laziness of IT managers. They though the "cloud" would be easier and cheaper, and they are now trapped.

[matheusmoreira]

You don't have deliverability issues?

I entertained the idea of running my own mail servers for a while. After researching the topic it turned out that the internet now runs on an IP reputation system. Major email services like gmail assume that anything sent from unknown IPs is malicious.

So it looks like we've gotta be well connected to federate with the other email servers now. A nobody like me can't just start up his own mail server at home and expect to deliver email to his family members who use gmail or outlook. So I became a Proton Mail customer instead.

[dpifke]

I've run my own mail servers for many decades and have never had any deliverability issues. I've also never used bargain basement cloud VPS services with horrible reputations.

The best way to ensure a good reputation is to obtain your own address space from a RIR. Barring that, you need to choose a provider with a decent reputation to delegate the space to you.

[zokier]

> The best way to ensure a good reputation is to obtain your own address space from a RIR.

There is the slight problem that RIRs ran out of (v4) addresses almost a decade ago.

[dpifke]

Not true, at least for ARIN. If you have an IPv6 allocation, you can obtain one or more IPv4 /24 allocations, so long as their stated purpose is to provide IPv4/IPv6 compatibility (e.g. for dual-stack services or NAT): https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/nrpm/#4-10-dedicated...

[matheusmoreira]

> obtain your own address space from a RIR

How does one do that? And what are the costs involved?

[dpifke]

From your HN profile, I see you're in Brazil, which is part of the region IANA has delegated to LACNIC. Per [0], LACNIC has further delegated numbering authority in Brazil to Registro.br.

Following the links on that page (or performing a simple Google search) leads one to: https://registro.br/tecnologia/numeracao/como-solicitar/

[0]: https://www.lacnic.net/1016/2/lacnic/ip-request

[matheusmoreira]

Looks like I need to become a literal ISP then.

Before I even start this bureaucratic process, I need to create an actual organization. Then I need to be assigned an ASN. Only then I'll be allowed to beg them for IPs. Once all that's taken care of, I need to tell them things like what the IPs will be used for and what my infrastructure is. If they like my answer, then they'll approve my request and finally tell me what the prices are.

[elhenrico]

https://registro.br/tecnologia/numeracao/custos/ Setup R$ 14.080,00 (~ 2,624 USD) anual cost R$ 3.379,20 (~ 630 USD)

[jitl]

This seems like a lot of TODOs for something I’d rather just pay a few cents for

[nicoburns]

> After researching the topic it turned out that the internet now runs on an IP reputation system. Major email services like gmail assume that anything sent from unknown IPs is malicious.

You have to buy/rent a dedicated IP address (that you'll be able to keep long term), and it warm it up by gradually increasing mail volume over a few months to weeks. But once you have, deliverability shoudl be fine.

I think the bigger issue is needing to keep on top of mainenance of the server.

[zenmac]

Like the parent have ran Email servers for many years now. If you get a bad IP, as long as you get the DKIM records right, over time it will 'warm' up the IP. And the more you use the email on that IP and NOT spam people. The IP will warm up. Make sure you actually own that IP!!! It will become valuable.

[op00to]

This does you no good for the months or years it takes to "warm up" your email while your messages are getting thrown into the trash.

[jamesreadsnews]

Key point - own the IP. We own our IPs and we also buy elastic IPs from AWS. The entire AWS subnet (it seems their entire address space) is universally garbage and unwarmable. Our own IPs have hummed along for years with zero issues.

[truekonrads]

Deliver via sendgrid*, receive directly is probably the only viable path for self hosted systems.

Where sendgrid=any major player, could be Mimecast, proofpoint or anyone else who will forward outgoing email.

[dpifke]

FWIW, a huge percentage of the spam I get is via Sendgrid, and at some point in the past year or two their abuse reporting mechanisms all turned into black holes, so mail sent via Sendgrid is heavily penalized in my spam rules.

Sending reputation is just as applicable if you're using a third party as if you're hosting it yourself, but much less under your control.

[drnick1]

I don't have deliverability issues to the big providers, but that comes down to the age of my domain and my IP in a clean non-residential block. But you won't have reputation issues if your friends and family also run their own server and don't enforce such arbitrary requirements. Running your own servers, not only for email, is the only way to regain control over your computing.

[jedberg]

> The privacy benefits are huge

Are they? I'd bet 90% of the email in your archive went through Google or Microsoft or Yahoo's servers, and most likely a copy still resides there.

If you're sending to or getting a message from a Gmail account, Google still has a copy.

[xp84]

Can you share what your antispam strategy is?

I have arrived at the opinion that what I would do if I moved to selfhost would just be to pay some trivial amount for outbound email via a provider like sendgrid as someone else in these comments has also mentioned. Since I send out maybe a half dozen emails a month I don't think this would be a big deal.

But when I relied on selfhosted email several years ago, I was always inundated with spam, which SpamAssassin was wildly undermatched to handle -- that was one of the main reasons I moved to gmail. So I'm curious what people who are happy self-hosting today are using.

[drnick1]

My suggestion would be to use a unique alias for each website/company. This way, if you start receiving spam at that address, you know who leaked it, and can simply delete the alias. You should also then publicly name and shame the source of spam.

I also run SpamAssassin on my server, but I don't believe it ever had to do anything.

[kuon]

Reverse DNS check and rspam check at connection phase (no spam folder and false positive gets an email from their MTA)

[stackskipton]

I’m the reverse, I can Microsoft 8 bucks not to mess with this? Sign me up!