Everyone says running your own mail server is not advised. Do you find it difficult or time consuming? I'd like to try it but I'm worried it's too much work - what's your setup?
Also have been running my own postfix mail server for several years now. It does take a bit of work to grok all the moving parts, but once you do it's actually quite straightforward.
As long as you have the following configured, then you shouldn't have any problems with getting classified as spam:
- Tight authorization on your SMTP server, obviously,
- SPF, to declare what IPs your domain sends from, so people can't spoof SMTP as you,
- DKIM to let your domain name sign your messages, so you can prove that you what arrived is what you intended to send,
- DMARC to link up the From header with the above, to prove that you're not spoofing senders, and
- The right MX and PTR records in youre DNS zones, to prove you're not spoofing IP addresses.
The above essentially amounts to setting up postfix, opendkim, and DNS, but there are a lot of moving parts, so it's easy to feel overwhelmed at first. Don't hesitate to PM me if you would like to set up your server and need some help.
Not OP, but also run my own email server, using postfix, since 2012. It is sad that there is such a widespread belief it is impossible to do unless you're google. Decentralization of basic internet services helps everyone, so if you're at all interested and willing to learn, go for it!
There are plenty guides on setting up postfix. Follow them, cross reference a few, read the docs and use the various free email test sites to sanity check everything. If you've never done it before, expect to dedicate 2-3 days to this.
But don't forget to periodically check the TLS certificate of your SMTP server. Administrators often forget to renew the certificates, and automated renewal processes may also break.
I've seen countless examples of SMTP servers with expired certs. The problem is that you won't notice it, as SMTP will fall back to plain-text communication if the certificate is invalid. So the server will still work with an expired cert.
But if you want to do it right, or if you want to adopt MTA-STS, you usually need to do a bit of regular maintenance on the TLS part.
We've also had some of our users report that an expired cert was hurting their domain reputation for spam algorithms. We have not been able to verify that, but it sounds plausible.
Nearly every time someone suggests against this it's not about issues in setting up the server or receiving emails. It's that many popular providers don't trust random IP addresses sending emails, especially those that 'look like' common spam (such as order invoices from common e-commerce sites like Woocommerce or Shopify).
From an inbox perspective these often look like cold outreach (you've never emailed this company before and the first email they send to you is after you order something) so it's suspicious, and being from a trusted platform helps pass the test.
Running your own mail server is not advised if you are trying to handle mail for your friends, family or company when you are not paid for that.
If it is for yourself or for your single person company and YOU handle all the things and you know what is important and when emails are not delivered it is not that much of a problem.
