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Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 17:43:42 -0800
Message-Id: <CGLG6YBK1PTJ.1H2HNTNW405CJ@thonker>
Cc: 
Subject: Re: Self hosted email spam
From: "Kalyan Sriram" <kalyan@coderkalyan.com>
To: "Sebastian LaVine" <mail@smlavine.com>,
 <~sircmpwn/sr.ht-discuss@lists.sr.ht>
References: <CGLDV4NDVMOT.MW10264ZUODJ@thonker>
 <CGLECLBONMJI.3J5MRV9TBGS7G@archlinux-x220>
In-Reply-To: <CGLECLBONMJI.3J5MRV9TBGS7G@archlinux-x220>

On Tue Dec 21, 2021 at 4:17 PM PST, Sebastian LaVine wrote:
> 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 + doveco=
t
> > 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 t=
o
> > accept my messages into primary inbox. Even with all the usual anti-spa=
m
> > measures implemented, they put me in spam (which is slightly better tha=
n
> > 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, bu=
t
> > 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.
>
Thanks a lot. I will look through this script to see if I forgot to
configure anything.
> -- Sebastian
>
> [0]: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/emailwiz