this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Why do so many services require email configuration? (piefed.social)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by artyom@piefed.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Recently I was locked out of my own Ghost blog platform because they decided they were going to add Email 2FA. I also cannot add any other authors because that requires email verification.

Today I was looking at installing Bonfire and came across this:

Bonfire requires working email for user signups, password resets, and notifications. Most installations will need email configuration before the instance is usable.

Setting up email is a pain in the ass, costs money, is dependent on 3rd parties, violates privacy, and is just completely unnecessary. Why wouldn't you give users the option to not use it? It's infuriating!

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[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If it's not one it's definitely the other.

[–] mjr@infosec.pub 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] suicidaleggroll@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

dealing with incoming spam is just way more work than paying to have it hosted.

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.

[–] mjr@infosec.pub 1 points 3 days ago

That depends who's hosting it. There's few good reviews of email hosting out there at the moment.