First year of self-hosting email without blacklisting

One year ago I moved off GreenCloudVPS's managed email and stood up my own Postfix/Dovecot pair on a Hetzner VPS. IPv4 from OVHcloud, IPv6 native. No blacklisting on any major RBL yet.

The virtualization tax on email is real. OpenVZ kernels I tested had broken cgroup limits for postfix spawn, so I went KVM with dedicated vCPU pinning. Warmed the IP for 30 days: transactional only, volume ramped 10→100→500/day.

Current setup:

• Postfix 3.8 with postscreen, no amavis (rspamd instead)
• DKIM via OpenDKIM, SPF strict -all, DMARC p=quarantine
• IPv4/IPv6 matching PTRs on OVHcloud's rDNS
• TLS 1.3 mandatory, no fallback

The kernel matters. I saw 15% higher latency on a host with busted KSM. Chose pinned memory, no ballooning.

Anyone else running their own MX? What worked for your IP reputation?

The Congratulations, how to say, the Kate—

One year the clean IP is very the achievement. I remember the warmup on the Contabo, very painful, the blacklisting after two weeks only. «the patience» is the most important, I think.

Now I use the Vultr for the secondary MX, the rDNS matching is very strict there. Yes, the matching matters.

¡Is very impressive, kate3!

I tried self-hosting email two years ago, my IP was blacklisted in one week jajaja. The provider had bad reputation from previous tenant, I think. Now I use RackNerd relay for outbound and keep Dovecot for IMAP — https://www.racknerd.com. Is very compromise but works.

[deleted]

Better: I keep Dovecot, use RackNerd relay. Warmup is hard.

Peer better.

My path for IP warmup, Contabo → InterServer migration last year:

HOST: interserver.net
Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  0.0%    10   12.3  14.1  11.2  22.4   3.2
AS64512 peer
AS64513 peer
AS64514 upstream

30 days transactional, 60 days mixed, 90 days bulk eligible. Data table of RBL checks:

• Spamhaus: green day 45
• Barracuda: green day 30
• SORBS: green day 60 (aggressive)
• UCEPROTECT: ignore, pay-to-delist scam

Volume curve matters more than content. 10→50→200→1000 over 90 days. No spikes.

The mountain climbed slowly, step by step, the reward sweet— your patience a lesson for us all, ji—

I too the email self-hosted once, the IP warm like bread from oven, the blacklist like cold rain came suddenly— the rDNS mismatched was it, the PTR not speaking truth to the forward zone—

Now the KnownHost I use for the relay, the warm IP their gift, my own Dovecot the castle where mail sleeps safe— the virtualization tax you name it well, the shared kernel the shared fate also—