[kwlug-disc] (Running a VPS) Mail Server? [Was: VPS (again)]

[Fernando Duran]

Hi,

I've run mail servers for several years but not any more.

In a nutshell I found the initial setup quite easy: just install postfix and dovecot, put in postfix' config file your domain and you're pretty much good to go. If you host several domains, users and forwarders etc there's a bit of maintenance but there's also interfaces to help with that kind of tasks.

In almost all cases I didn't didn't find spam to be a problem, just by adding black list servers it cut it by 95% or so: https://gist.github.com/fduran/1870498

So if it's a mail server for yourself that is not critical, running your own is fine. If you are running it for other people, it starts to be not worthy, compared to $2/month per mailbox if outsourcing it to Rackspace for example.

The biggest issue im(ns)ho is deliverability of messages for critical services. Basically if you run a random mail server in the Internet everything is fine until one day a big mail server provider like gmail drops your messages silently (not even delivering to spam folder) without warning. So for important stuff I'd outsource transactional emails to specialist services like Mailgun, Sendgrid etc.
 
--------------------- 
Fernando Duran 
http://www.fduran.com



> On Friday, December 19, 2014 4:52 AM, B. S. <bs27975 at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> > From: Colin Mackay <zixiekat at gmail.com>
>> To: KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> 
>> Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2014 2:18 PM
>> Subject: [kwlug-disc] VPS (again)
>> 
>> .
>> .
>> .
> 
>> I run a little mail server, and a few small web pages, nothing really
>>  more.
> 
> Speaking of ...
> 
> The idea of running one's own mail server has always seemed a little 
> 'scary' - not just to me, but others here have expressed similar.
> 
> So many little fiddly bits, DNS stuff [can't recall the term, not DFC - the 
> MX record isn't the problem, it's the rest], multiple programs chained 
> together, blacklists, spamassasin, don't know what all else.
> 
> Always seemed too much work. Anyone using yahoo these days probably wonders if 
> it's less work than Yahoo has been!
> 
> Is there a current best practices how to on running one's own e-mail server 
> (IMAP, not POP) out there these days? [Googling it will just bury you.]
> 
> Colin, has it been much of a problem / time consumer, what did you use to figure 
> out what you needed to get going, and so on?
> 
> 
> 
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