How we refreshed self-hosted Recoil email with our own RIPE-allocated IPv4 block, and deployed Postfix/rspamd/Dovecot to get full SPF/DKIM/DMARC deliverability.
First off, congrats to the author for pulling it off. Very detailed write-up as well.
That being said, personally I don’t consider the effort worth it. Email is a shit protocol in my opinion (understandable considering when it was designed).
Then there’s the fact that in order to do this, they used a /24 IPv4 block. That’s not a realistic requirement for anyone. If your self-hosted service requires this, it’s unfeasible.
Email is so simple that countless additions had to be made to just somehow handle the protocol on the modern Internet. Its upside to be simple has been completely subverted. And yet, all these additions haven’t made email anymore capable for the user.
Any attempt for a real successor is ultimately futile because of email’s ubiquity, and yet self-hosting it in a way that you can communicate with the outside works reliably is almost impossible.
First off, congrats to the author for pulling it off. Very detailed write-up as well.
That being said, personally I don’t consider the effort worth it. Email is a shit protocol in my opinion (understandable considering when it was designed).
Then there’s the fact that in order to do this, they used a /24 IPv4 block. That’s not a realistic requirement for anyone. If your self-hosted service requires this, it’s unfeasible.
Email is so simple that countless additions had to be made to just somehow handle the protocol on the modern Internet. Its upside to be simple has been completely subverted. And yet, all these additions haven’t made email anymore capable for the user.
Any attempt for a real successor is ultimately futile because of email’s ubiquity, and yet self-hosting it in a way that you can communicate with the outside works reliably is almost impossible.