this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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I tried maybe 15 years ago and it went about as well as you'd expect for back then. But I'm starting to get the itch again.

Have any of you tried relatively recently? How impossible is it to get reliable deliverability to gmail and whatnot these days?

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[–] nitrolife@rekabu.ru 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Well... as I already wrote, my home server is literally on the Internet because I rent a static public IP address from the provider.

But if you have a VPS, then you just need to do port forwarding to your server with a VPS, and then add the following entries to the mx DNS server:

you.domain.              21600   IN      MX      10 you.first.vps.
you.domain.              21600   IN      MX      20 you.second.vps.

Where 10 and 20 are the server priority Or if the VPS is part of your domain then:

you.domain.              21600   IN      MX      10 first.vps.you.domain. 
you.domain.              21600   IN      MX      20 second.vps.you.domain. 

first.vps.you.domain.             21600   IN      A       1.1.1.1
second.vps.you.domain.        21600   IN      A       2.2.2.2

And if you also have IPv6, you can do

first.vps.you.domain.             21600   IN      AAAA       fd00::1
second.vps.you.domain.        21600   IN      AAAA       fd00::2

Where 1.1.1.1, 2.2.2.2, fd00::1 and fd00::2 are the addresses of your VPS

You also need to enter the address in the SPF:

you.domain.              21600   IN      TXT     "v=spf1 +mx -all"

What does it mean

v=spf1 is the SPF version.

+mx – it is allowed to send mail from the IP addresses specified in the MX records of the domain.

-all – prohibits sending from any other servers (hard refusal).

Also, in order for the signature to work on the mail server, you need to make several TXT entries (for a detailed explanation, see my links about DKIM):

keyname.__domainkey.you.domain. TXT "v=DKIM1; ...%DKIM params%"

and

you.domain.             86400   IN      TXT     "v=DMARC1...%dmarc params%"

And you need ask you VPS provider set PTR for you VPS IP address with first.vps.you.domain. Or some providers access that config in web panel.