I keep on hearing that hosting your own server is a pain. Email costs were always an issue for me. I manage a few e-commerce website. Initially when they were small I used MailChimp. Then moved to AWS SES. Now I moved to my own self hosted postalserver. My mailing lists are not huge ( 100k recipients) and I send daily and I don't have much of a deliverability issue. Depending on the audience my open rates are between 35 and 55%.
What I learned is:
- Make sure your configuration is perfect. From reverse dns to DKIM. Everything should be aligned.
- Have a clean email list. Validate emails ( MX, etc ), double optin, remove hard bounces, respect unsubscribes to the t ( people don't always unsubscribe using the link, but often just send an email to customer service, provide the option fornthe customer service team to unsubscribe people from marketing).
- Use a email warming service like mailreach. It seems weird but it makes a world of difference. It really works.
I spend less than $50/month all in all with a beefy instance on Hetzner Cloud. For the volume I send it would cost 6x this on SES.
What you're describing is exactly what most people would call "a pain". It is very doable if it is your job, but it's definitely much much more work than having a Gmail or Proton Mail account or whatever other provider if it's about your own personal email.
There are many who would like to not be beholden to anyone else for their own email, but when they try it, they quickly find it's far too much work to actually ensure that when they send an email to, say, apply for a job, it will certainly arrive.
I'm amazed at how email server software is innovating and evolving like never before. We have new implementations of SMTP, IMAP, etc. We even have new protocols like JMAP thanks to the Fastmail guys.
But it also feels like fewer and fewer people are running their own mail servers. Everyone seems to just outsource it to Google or Microsoft. I'm also surprised at how many engineers barely understand how email works. (IE: I have to show them what email headers are and the useful info that can ne found there.)
That's because email delivery is such a weird dance. It's getting harder every year to have your mail delivered without being part of those few services since the protocol is abused so much.
I love to throw out a library and implement something myself so I gain a better understanding of what’s going on and maybe even improve on what was there before. But I can’t do that with email. Other servers are going to accept or reject my mail solely based on what my IP is, irrespective of how good my implementation is or is not. I’ve just never found it worth the time to dig into.
I'm a huge fan of Chasquid. The HAProxy protocol support makes it easy to integrate in Kubernetes.
I uses to use this solution until a few months ago when I decided that self hosting my mail server was too much work. To be fair, it's not Chasquid's fault as operations there are basically 0, but more of a spam / email reputation thing.
Apparently there's no support for smarthost / relayhost (or I can't find any traces of it in the documentation). Running your own low traffic mail exchanger without it is often not a pleasant experience.
Does anyone know of an SMTP server which is easily usable with Caddy? I find tinkering with certificates quite bothersome, and I won't give up Caddy as I already host a bunch of apps with it.
The hook functionality[1] looks easy to extend. I was looking for something that could trigger workflows for inbound email, anyone have (alternative) tool recommendations or experience?
julienmarie|2 years ago
tsimionescu|2 years ago
There are many who would like to not be beholden to anyone else for their own email, but when they try it, they quickly find it's far too much work to actually ensure that when they send an email to, say, apply for a job, it will certainly arrive.
77pt77|2 years ago
That's really small amount per month but for 100K a day you can use almost any extremely low-end VPS
OccamsMirror|2 years ago
intsunny|2 years ago
But it also feels like fewer and fewer people are running their own mail servers. Everyone seems to just outsource it to Google or Microsoft. I'm also surprised at how many engineers barely understand how email works. (IE: I have to show them what email headers are and the useful info that can ne found there.)
keyle|2 years ago
afavour|2 years ago
I love to throw out a library and implement something myself so I gain a better understanding of what’s going on and maybe even improve on what was there before. But I can’t do that with email. Other servers are going to accept or reject my mail solely based on what my IP is, irrespective of how good my implementation is or is not. I’ve just never found it worth the time to dig into.
HHC-Hunter|2 years ago
denysvitali|2 years ago
I uses to use this solution until a few months ago when I decided that self hosting my mail server was too much work. To be fair, it's not Chasquid's fault as operations there are basically 0, but more of a spam / email reputation thing.
77pt77|2 years ago
Even if you don't ever SPAM and send like one email a day on average, you won't be able to get them delivered to the recipient's inbox.
You can use SPF, DKIM, DMARC all you want, google won't care.
jsn|2 years ago
MitPitt|2 years ago
tardisx|2 years ago
julienmarie|2 years ago
8organicbits|2 years ago
[1] https://blitiri.com.ar/p/chasquid/hooks/
e12e|2 years ago
mlhpdx|2 years ago
https://github.com/mlhpdx/email-delivery
It’s industrial strength in some respects, but not for those wanting an e-mail UX.
zilti|2 years ago