I want to set up an outgoing transactional email server for my small business. Do I need to purchase IP blocks? Given most IPs from VPS will have bad reputation.
Please respond only if you have ran an SMTP server. Not looking for heresay.
I was an email administrator for 6 years. I’ve ran every hosted mail service you can possibly think of. My advice: DON’T DO THIS!
Unless sending mail or hosting mail servers is the primary focus of the company, it’s a waste of time and labor to host and administrate.
I’d be surprised to find anyone recommending you self host a mail server. It’s an absolute nightmare. But best of luck to you
Or you can use an external SMTP gateway so all your mail is sent using a 3rd party service like mailchannels or spamexperts
I do run my own mail server from home, I have a second MX proxy on AWS, so even if my home goes out for a bit (less than 3 days) it will mail will be collected on my AWS server.
Getting it setup is easy, and cheap.
But getting it set up right is not, make a mistake and you could be an SMTP relay, people may start sending out bogus mail on using your email, and then there is the maintenance (backups, patching, etc)
Even if you were able to purchase a block of class C, who know what the reputation was prior to that. Then you need an ISP that will route said IPs to your home.
I have a small block of IPs (/29) and I think I pay 3 times what my residential peers pay.
I self hosted Exchange 5.5 at home, then went to SBS 2003, then SBS 20008, after that moved things to Hosted Exchange.
I still host a local mail server but it is Postfix and Dovecut (prior to Exchange 5.5 it was sendmail and uw-imap). My IPs are closing in on 2 decades old, and my domains 25 years.
If you want cheap and able to wait, maybe put it on AWS with an EIP, and wait till it is eventually clean. Be aware that if you get an IP from AWS even if you dont use it you will be charged and you still have to have them allow port 25. There is their SES service, but now I feeling you getting away from r/self-hosted.
New just established domains get a low reputation as well.
I encourage people to learn though, ask more questions here, expect most people to say don’t do it.
Good luck
How much did you pay for your IPs you purchased? I am not worried about people sending emails because its only outgoing transactional emails, and thats it.
Hello.
I run multiple email servers for different companies on multiple servers in different locations all onprem. Some are CTX containers on Proxmox some are just older physical servers.
Do not even try to run it on VPS or on any low reputation IP’s or internet domains.
Use a different internet domain (not subdomain) and IP for your marketing/newsletter/e.t.c. or such that are susceptible for blacklisting, so your business email still get trough.
I’m hosting one. All foss software. The name of.the game is reputation building. Be ready to spend a lot of time emailing providers. After a few months it gets better depending on how much traffic your server has.