Most mail services will block self hosted mail servers because you have no IP reputation or if you're using a VPS could have an IP that previously ended up on a blacklist.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, but that block is normally in a form of being marked as spam. This is different. Mail gets dropped without ever reaching the recipient's mailbox.

As an aside, I have been running my own mailserver for years and it's been working fine since the beginning. Getting marked as spam here and there, but for the most part - fine. I'll shift the mail setup at some point to have proper dkim support, but for now all I can say is - avoid gmail.

old man shouting at clouds

I understand how spam was a problem and why, at a glance, it seemed like a great idea to simply block any email that does not come from a previously known/trusted IP. However, in my opinion, all this has achieved are two things:

Massive centralisation of email - nobody can host their own easily anymore. You have to pay to get any semblance of guaranteed delivery
Dumbing down of the general populace - "you don't need to understand how any of this works! Here, use our service and it will just work!" Which also makes people complain to me about something as free (liberty) as email not being set up on google or aws. Screw those guys, I want my free internet.

[–] brygphilomena 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. I don't really want to get into troubleshooting, but general curiosity has me wondering a few things since my server gets delivered to Gmail but only marked as spam for a new domain for the first couple weeks.

Is there a hard spf fail? Is your IP or domain on any blacklists? Is it a digital ocean or similar vps provider using their IP pool? Do you get any bounce back from Gmail with a reason or is it silently dropping?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, it's digitalocean and yes, I get a bounced message telling me to use an email provider. I have some plans that involve a wider setup than just my lemmy instance, hence the delay in implementation.

[–] brygphilomena 2 points 1 year ago

Ah yea. I've seen the whole digital ocean IP space be blocked. They really dont like digital ocean.

[–] brygphilomena 1 points 1 year ago

Most mail service will not outright block email. Most seem to be configured to follow a handful of blacklists and build a reputation.

They might start you marked as spam, but few outright block based solely on IP. Spam filters are far more mature than that these days.