So, I spent the last few days researching and then finally setting up mailcow. I got my domain name, my wildcard certificate, got all the containers up, disabled ipv6 (I don’t have it set up on my home router and am too lazy to set it up tbh), created a domain and an mailbox, etc.

Well, when testing it late last night, I found that I could receive mail but was getting timeouts when sending mail. After some googling, I found out that this will happen if port 25 is not open. Using traceroute, I found that port 25 traffic is not going outside my home network. And sure enough, I found on my ISP web site that I need to have a business account to unblock port 25, which costs twice what I am paying for internet now.

So what are my options? Is there any way around this? Do I need to host this elsewhere, such as AWS? Can I use a proxy or something that can translate it to a different port for me?

Edit: Yeah, so I just set up an alias to my existing email address. It isn’t what I wanted to do, but as many have pointed out, I’m fighting a losing battle here. :(

  • poVoqEnglish
    33•1 year ago

    Pointless. Your selfhosted e-mail will just end up in spam-filters anyway.

    Sadly email federation is on its last breath and you are better off using an external service somewhere if you want your email to actually reach anyone.

    Edit: it’s not much better on VPS you can rent either.

    Edit: and in before the person that claims they have been self-hosting email for 20 years already… yes exactly! That is why yours still works.

    • Admiral PatrickEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      Edit: and in before the person that claims they have been self-hosting email for 20 years already… yes exactly! That is why yours still works.

      You’re out of line, but you’re right. Lol

    • DandroidOPEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      Why is this? I know my dad has self-hosted an email server for about 15 years, and he only recently started having issues with his email going to spam. He was able to get it worked out, but he said it was annoying af, and he didn’t recommend getting into it now either. I think he had to talk to Google to get some special certificate or something.

      • poVoqEnglish
        14•1 year ago

        Well, your dad seems to have answered your question already no?

        Google and Microsoft are using spam as an convenient excuse to wall off their email gardens and to put insult to the injury, they are a major source of email spam these days.

    • Sifr Moja
      2•1 year ago

      @poVoq I only in the last year or so set-up an SMTP server for outbound only. DKIM, SPF and DMARC configured. I never have issues sending email anywhere.

      • poVoq
        7•1 year ago

        They don’t bounce when the spam filter catches them. I have seen many people claiming they have no issues sending emails just for all their emails directly go to the spam-folder in my gmail account (that I reluctantly have). Maybe ask the people you are sending the emails to? Just because you don’t immediately notice the problem doesn’t mean it isn’t there.