For example, something that is too complex for your comfort level, a security concern, or maybe your hardware can’t keep up with the service’s needs?
For example, something that is too complex for your comfort level, a security concern, or maybe your hardware can’t keep up with the service’s needs?
I figured email would be a common theme. I’m just starting to dip my toes into all of this, so an email server is not on my to-do list (and may never be).
Google and other large scale providers have intentionally made it very difficult to self host your own email. It’s generally not considered a wise move these days and is very difficult to maintain.
Why do you say so? I’m not an expert in the fields, but isn’t a mail server pretty much the same as 20 years ago plus DKIM and SPF?
Problem is, that most larger providers sort your mails to spam if the domain is not well known to them, which is not easy to achieve
Mmm…are you sure about that? I happen to buy some random domain and I’ve never had any problem sending email even right after the domain created.
There’s been a lot of write ups on this, such as this one: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won.
But there are even people that still self host email server (have a look in the selfhosted subreddit for example). IP reputation is a thing, for sure, but I don’t feel that it’s been brought up by the big corp wickedly, it’s a good way to prevent spam to arrive to the server. There are thousands of email providers in the world that are not Google, Amazon, Microsoft or some other big corp. This means that is possible. Is it difficult? For me for sure!!! But I think that the rising difficulty has been a result of this fields over the years. Just my 2 cents.
With DKIM and SPF, I’ve had zero problems in the last 15 years of selfhosting, most recently with Mailcow Docker on a residential IP. I don’t even have a reverse PTR to my mailserver hostname, just a PTR provided by the ISP that can be resolved.
I’ve added a few fresh, un-reputed domains to the server and had no issues.
I think many people’s problems with running email servers are self-inflicted. I remember even before there were things like blacklists, etc with large providers, many people had problems keeping mailservers running. It’s just not an easy task for a variety of reasons completely unassociated with the mega’s blacklisting you. I’ve been running mailservers at various scales for 20+ years so maybe it’s just second nature to me now.
I have an email server but it is not my main email account. I’m purely only using it to learn and to have email notifications sent out from a few services. I do not trust myself or my setup enough to have my main email account hosted on it