this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
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[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

It should be noted that email servers, no matter the setup, require you to follow strict standards to achieve proper delivery. It's very easy to get blacklisted, and it's next to impossible to get off of said blacklist once you're on it.

I used to host my own mail server with this, but it got to be too much to get my emails to actually send. I was always wondering if my email was actually delivered or if it was silently bounced or sent to spam. Email is the only thing I'm not willing to self host.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I'm absolutely in the "don't self-host email" camp. That said, I think it could be done reliably if you wanted to use someone else's SMTP server and let them worry about deliverability. As in, have your mx records on your domain route to your MTA and dovecot, but set your DKIM and SPF records to match a third party SMTP server. You could use mxroute as an SMTP server very cheaply. There are others like the email API type services. I still can't think of why I'd want to self host with all this drama but just an idea I've heard.

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