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Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 19:17:02 -0500
Message-Id: <CGLECLBONMJI.3J5MRV9TBGS7G@archlinux-x220>
Subject: Re: Self hosted email spam
From: "Sebastian LaVine" <mail@smlavine.com>
To: "Kalyan Sriram" <kalyan@coderkalyan.com>,
 <~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss@lists.sr.ht>
Cc: 
References: <CGLDV4NDVMOT.MW10264ZUODJ@thonker>
In-Reply-To: <CGLDV4NDVMOT.MW10264ZUODJ@thonker>

On Tue Dec 21, 2021 at 6:54 PM EST, Kalyan Sriram wrote:
> Hello all,
> For the past year, I've been self hosting email (using postfix + dovecot
> on a Vultr VPS) - both as an educational exercise and a chance to get
> away from Google - which is tied to my domain, coderkalyan.com. However,
> when I first set it up, I was unable to get GMail to not put me in spam,
> so I decided to go with Amazon SES as an SMTP proxy so I could rest
> assured my email was being delivered.
>
> Recently, I came across the [maddy](https://maddy.email) email client
> and have been using it for the past couple of weeks. I decided that
> since I had to rip out my existing DNS configuration and redo it, I'd
> take the opportunity to try to remove AWS from my workflow However,
> despite multiple days of googling and trying, I'm unable to get gmail to
> accept my messages into primary inbox. Even with all the usual anti-spam
> measures implemented, they put me in spam (which is slightly better than
> not receiving it at all, which is what they do if you don't have
> everything set up). What I've tried so far:
>
> * DKIM and DMARC set up
> * SPF records
> * configured reverse DNS through Vultr and it seems to be working
> * google site verification TXT record
> * TLSA/DANE record
> * MTA-STS record and subdomain setup (mta-sts.coderkalyan.com)
> * 10/10 score on https://mail-tester.com
> * high scores on other mail testing platforms, in fact the only issue
> I've seen is that I don't fill out a lists unsubscribe header (which
> doesn't seem sensible for a private email server).
> * I've tried to use Google Postmaster tools and other reputation sites
> but apparently postmaster doesn't even bother to look at your domain
> until you meet a certain email throughput, which is designed for
> businesses sending to large mailing lists so I'll never meet that.
>
> I suspect I'm not the only person on this mailing list who self-hosts,
> so I thought I'd reach out to see if anyone could help me out. Correct
> me if I'm wrong, not sure how exactly mailing lists are implemented, but
> I assume lists.sr.ht itself needs to pass some sort of spam checks to
> get delivered to GMail inboxes (and for the most part I haven't seen
> issues with that in the past).
>
> Any advice would be much appreciated. Please do not suggest that I move
> to a hosted provider or use an SMTP proxy. I realize that these exist
> (even ethical ones like Migadu) and do not need others to tell me that.
> I will move back to an SMTP proxy if all else fails, but I'm interested
> in solving this problem directly.
>
> Thanks,
> Kalyan Sriram

Hi Kalyan,

I've self-hosted my email on my Vultr VPS for several months now with no
issue. I set it up with this script[0] which you may find useful.

-- Sebastian

[0]: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz