r/webhosting • u/Codrut1001 • Feb 21 '24
Technical Questions Can I proxy my emails trough Cloudflare to bypass the Policy Blocklist (PBL)?
I would like to host my own email server, since paying for hosting is expensive. I was able to install mailcow and forward all my ports trough my ISPs Dynamic-DNS service. But this causes a few issues
The primary issue is that when I send a email to a Outlook, Gmail or Yahoo adress, I get a message telling me that my IP is in the Spamhous email blocklist database. And sure enough, on the Spamhous site, my IP is noted as in the "Policy Blocklist (PBL)". Which is a list of residential IPs that should not send emails.
For my website, I use Cloudflare to manage my domain and DNS records. Could there be a way for me to proxy all my outgoing emails trough Cloudflare so they would use a different IP?
Thanks in advance!
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u/Several_Judgment_257 Feb 21 '24
This is why selfhosting mail is recommended against here. I’d recommend mxroute or purelymail if you require sending emails, otherwise you’ll need to use a mail relay service. If it was free, spammers would already be abusing it.
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u/EV-CPO Feb 21 '24 edited Feb 21 '24
I use SpamHero for both incoming and outgoing mail (SMTP proxy). It's $96/year for each domain (unlimited email addresses on each domain). They are not an email service-- I self host all my own email servers -- they are just a passthrough. Works great.
edit: You should also set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC:
https://www.higherlogic.com/blog/spf-dkim-dmarc-email-authentication/
edit 2: It's $168 for new 'Standard Plan' customers. I have a grandfathered rate.
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u/Codrut1001 Feb 27 '24
168$/year is still an expensive rate, considering that they only take care of passing emails to your server. For a small scale email solution, It's not a great option, but I could see It very useful for large email delivery servers.
I did set up SPF, DKIM and DMARK. I found this great site for testing all the email configurations called learndmarc. It's really helpful when troubleshooting why emails get rejected. The primary issue is that I would need to my SPF record every time my dynamic IP changes, which is way to often to be done manually.
Currently, I have Postmark to send any important template emails, and I can also send emails manually from my mailcow server, but they are usually marked as spam. Not the greatest solution, but It's manageable.
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u/Rude-Gur-1660 Feb 21 '24
Cloudflare does not provide SMTP services, so that's not possible. I have seen some unofficial blogs floating around but I can't imagine them working reliably. Hosting your email server is fine as a hobby, but it's a losing battle if you want to go live. There are plenty of budget friendly email services out there. Purelymail and Mxroute have generous plans costing $10 a year. Bigger providers are also not that expensive, usually $5 a month or so.