A few months ago I wrote a comment on HN about algorithmic trading and someone emailed me about it. I sent him a reply from my self-hosted email domain, and I have no idea if he got it. I'm on a clean IP and clean domain, with a reputable hoster. I have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC set up correctly. Just last week I sent my gmail account a test email and sure enough it went to spam. There appears to be no rhyme or reason about it.
I believe the difference between people who say "email self-hosting is dead" and people who say "email self-hosting is trivial" is probably the volume of mail sent from their domain(s).
At my busiest, I was sending dozens of emails per day, but they were all from my work account. My personal account is pretty close to recv-only and probably averages an outgoing message count in the single digits per week. How can I reasonably keep an IP/domain reputation score fresh/warm if I send such a low volume? The answer is I realistically can't.
Self-hosted email remains an extremely difficult and time-consuming endeavor unless you happen to have some good luck, it seems.
I believe the difference between people who say "email self-hosting is dead" and people who say "email self-hosting is trivial" is probably the volume of mail sent from their domain(s).
At my busiest, I was sending dozens of emails per day, but they were all from my work account. My personal account is pretty close to recv-only and probably averages an outgoing message count in the single digits per week. How can I reasonably keep an IP/domain reputation score fresh/warm if I send such a low volume? The answer is I realistically can't.
Self-hosted email remains an extremely difficult and time-consuming endeavor unless you happen to have some good luck, it seems.