Self hosting? I can't even visit simple static web pages without Cloudflare blocking me because my web browser isn't sufficiently trackable. There's no way they're letting self-hosted email messages get through.
Is it? Last time I tried to self-host my email I did. I had DKIM, DMARC and SPF set up correctly as verified by multiple sites, but I couldnt't get reliable delivery to any Microsoft-hopsted mailboxes. Every other provider I tested was perfectly happy with my mail, unfortunately MS is too big a provider to ignore them.
> What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC.
Maybe it was my IP, but I cycled a few with my hosting provider and none of them made a difference. If I am unable to reliable obtain a 'trusted' IP, what good does it do?
I switched to hosted email and all my delivery issues were gone.
There are tools that can check if your IP is on a blacklist [1].
Also, my experience with self-hosting email is that if you get people to email you first from their domain, and you reply to them, then you are not going to be blocked. Of course, this won't work if you send a lot of cold emails.
>> What matters is domain age, IP, and compliance with DKIM/DMARC.
>Maybe it was my IP, but I cycled a few with my hosting provider and none of them made a difference. If I am unable to reliable obtain a 'trusted' IP, what good does it do?
That's true. I have a Class C IP range and a domain registered for 30 years and yet Gmail still started ignoring my email server a couple of years ago...
What is there to prove? You can register your own domain (avoid exotic TLDs), wait a few months to build trust, and use an email setup script like Luke Smith's to set up Postfix/Dovecot.
Before you start sending email, use mail-tester.com to check that DKIM is correctly set up and that your IP is not blacklisted.
I would like to know what your're running, too, in case I can find a better workaround.
I'm running MX Linux, Arch Linux, and FreeBSD, and usually use Seamonkey or Pale Moon, and if I absolutely have to I use Thorium.
Some websites using Cloudflare services, or other similar services, first load a landing page, historically with a captcha checkbox to verify that I'm human that would let me through, after completing. More recently, it'll outright say that I am denied access, or when I check the box it switches to a throbber that spins indefinitely, or it unchecks itself.
Some web pages, like eBay, will let me through initially, then at some point all tabs I have open will simultaneously switch to an unpassable captcha.
And all these services doubling or even trippeling their price to offer the same thing ... but with AI! I'd happily pay fastmail double the price, without the AI.
I genuinely tried to embrace them, but I have found these AI "enhancements" to be utterly useless. Very rare that they can answer the question I'm having about the product. I'm not sure what the norms are for how these assistants are trained or fine tuned for the specific products they're being offered in, but it seems that they're pretty bad. They don't seem to know anything about the product you're using them in.
I am attempting to dogfood it, as I am pretty close to the target audience. I, a dev, get a bug report "X doesn't work". I have never heard of "X". Ask the AI assistant instead of Googling it or asking on Slack.
Google's AI overview is basically always better (and delivered sooner) than our own proprietary AI assistant.
> Add a user to your billing plan to give someone their own Fastmail Inbox and login. Build your team, be it work or family, and share calendars, contacts and more. Give users extra addresses for free
The way my UX works is I can add users but they always have to have their own paid plan. Makes sense for heavy email users but not so much for my partner or our kids. I was hoping there was a 5 accounts for the price of 3 thing like Spotify et al do.
Tbh I do wish Fastmail would add some kind of automatic email classification like Gmail added many years ago to filter the newsletters out of the important email.
Came here to say this. I use fastmail am quite happy with it because I just want a reliable inbox and nothing else. Just keep it running and don't touch anything else.