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Why do so many services require email configuration?
(piefed.social)
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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Well, one of the two, at any rate.
If it's not one it's definitely the other.
Even if you self-host, other people's mailservers still interact with it, unless you only chat with other users you host. And some of the big webmails variously get really pernickity about your DNS, DKIM and more, or they deploy some pretty obnoxious countermeasures against your server with little explanation. So I'd say it's more often both than not, no matter what you do. If you think it's not being a pain, there's probably an unpleasant surprise in your server logs or coming soon!
It's still often worth self-hosting, but that's more big webmail really sucks, even ISPs often don't set their mailservers up well and it's often an early casualty of ISP managers looking for costs to cut.
Even if you have a proper clean IP, running a mail server is a hassle imo. By far having a single relay to send is fine if you get things set right, but also dealing with incoming spam is just way more work than paying to have it hosted.
I much prefer paying for email hosting and just dealing with outgoing emails if needed.
The right way to deal with spam is not to use filters in the first place. It's not like Gmail or Proton or 's spam filters are perfect either, far from it, they still let a ton of shit through. The right way to deal with spam is to use unique aliases for each account that you can shut down if they leak.
That depends who's hosting it. There's few good reviews of email hosting out there at the moment.
Depending on 3rd parties is a pain in the ass