As the title reads, I really want to begin hosting my own email server again. I’m sick of the poor quality of the service providers out there. Damnit all I want/need is a reliable IMAP/SMTP provider. I spent 3 hours getting off of Hostinger and on to Zoho. I just hope Zoho won’t suck. It’s great for now but we’ll see.

Is the prevailing advice still not to bother with self-hosting email?

  • DomiEnglish
    7•1 year ago

    From a different Lemmy post I wrote a month ago:

    I also host my own mail and there’s been little issues.

    Microsoft is a pain in the ass if you’re in an IP space they don’t like like DigitalOcean. Which is ironic because they have the worst spam filter by far in the industry.

    If you want to get through to everyone you will have to:

    • Use a “good” TLD ( not .to, not .xyz, …)
    • Don’t use cloud platforms that are regularily used for spam (mostly DigitalOcean)
    • Use SPF
    • Use DMARC
    • Use DKIM
    • Use a PTR record
    • Don’t make an open relay by accident
    • Use proper ports and certificates
    • Register an abuse account at the big players (Google, Microsoft, …)
    • Don’t use an dynamic IP
    • Keep it up to date
    • Minimize downtime

    I can’t recommend mailcow enough, it makes setting up a mail server a breeze.

    https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

    Use the MXToolbox to verify your server(s).

    https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx