After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderI'm on 12 years of self hosting email and counting. Once every so often, I do end up being blocked, usually by Outlook and once by Yahoo. I'm in their 'sender program' and they still don't actually bother to contact postmaster@, but a few emails is usually enough to unblock the block within 24h. Agree with a sibling comment that many major providers fail to operate the SPF/DKIM/DMARC tools they insist you do. Each to their own, but ultimately if…
I threw in the towel after about 10 years but not because of deliverability problems. When I first started running an email server for myself and my friends and family, it was a great learning experience. And it kept being a good learning experience for a few years as I rolled out things like Bayesian spam filters and SPF. But eventually it got stable enough and did its job well enough that I stopped messing with it to learn things…
(2022) Some previous discussion: 2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796078 2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32715437
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 1953
- Total comments
- 826
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-09-04 | After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towelFirst breakout · Best thread | carlesfe | 1887 | 728 |
| 2023-12-28 | After self-hosting email for 23 years I have thrown in the towel (2022)Latest 20+ point return | ilamont | 61 | 97 |
| 2026-01-30 | After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel (2022) | linolevan | 5 | 1 |