Managing mail servers is nowadays only possible for million dollars backed companies. It's clearly something we discovered while running Improvmx.com.
Of course it's possible (and quite easy) to set up your own mail server, there are tons of guides out there for that, but this is just the tip of the iceberg! Once you have it up and running, you'll find yourself in a constant battle between those who spam you, and those who consider you spammer, real or not.
Using blacklists to filter out the bad incoming email is one efficient tool, but you need to rely on good, reliable and *honest* blacklist systems. Sorbs and Spamhaus comes to mind, compared to uceprotect and backscaterer. The last two asks you money to delist you regardless of what you did, and this is typically bad player playing on top of bad players. They do a race to the bottom by offering a racketing service.
But the worst is still that popular mail server uses these! Microsoft uses UCEProtect to filter email! So, as a mail provider like OP's, you find yourself in a pickle where you need to decide if you want your email to be delivered to Microsoft's users - that means paying, or not.
That is why managing emails has become a million dollars necessity if you want them to be up and running properly. You need to be close to the big ones, have a seat at the big tables where the decisions occurs and hopefully have your IPs added to whitelists.
To plug one very useful link in all this, I'd share Hetrix! (https://Hetrixtools.com), they monitor your IPs and notify you when they are listed on almost all the existing blacklists, and automatically delist them whenever possible, or provides you all the info to do to delist them. As a mail provider, this is on of the most useful tool there is.
Of course it's possible (and quite easy) to set up your own mail server, there are tons of guides out there for that, but this is just the tip of the iceberg! Once you have it up and running, you'll find yourself in a constant battle between those who spam you, and those who consider you spammer, real or not.
Using blacklists to filter out the bad incoming email is one efficient tool, but you need to rely on good, reliable and *honest* blacklist systems. Sorbs and Spamhaus comes to mind, compared to uceprotect and backscaterer. The last two asks you money to delist you regardless of what you did, and this is typically bad player playing on top of bad players. They do a race to the bottom by offering a racketing service.
But the worst is still that popular mail server uses these! Microsoft uses UCEProtect to filter email! So, as a mail provider like OP's, you find yourself in a pickle where you need to decide if you want your email to be delivered to Microsoft's users - that means paying, or not.
That is why managing emails has become a million dollars necessity if you want them to be up and running properly. You need to be close to the big ones, have a seat at the big tables where the decisions occurs and hopefully have your IPs added to whitelists.
To plug one very useful link in all this, I'd share Hetrix! (https://Hetrixtools.com), they monitor your IPs and notify you when they are listed on almost all the existing blacklists, and automatically delist them whenever possible, or provides you all the info to do to delist them. As a mail provider, this is on of the most useful tool there is.