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Comment by out-of-ideas | Hacker News Reader

> main restrictions: 1) Email aliases are receive-only, meaning you cannot send or reply to emails from your aliases

this part is a bummer but i do understand why; i feel it would be a huge improvement being able to do this if i were to self-host; especially if the headers make no use of "alias" or "sent on behalf of user X". (ive never been a fan of email addresses being 1:1 with usernames for public domains, a system that allows interchangeability on both would be a pretty big win, coupled with aliases, imo)

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Thanks for your feedback! Yes the primary reason for it being receive only right now is to combat spam. I am considering options where self-hosted users and cloud users (perhaps as a premium option) will be able to do this though.

One of the big challenges then would be that self hosting outgoing email servers has historically always been tricky thing in terms of email deliverability. A lot of big email providers block entire residential IP ranges, so more often than not emails tend to be delivered straight to spam.

But there are other options I’m considering such as being able to integrate AliasVault with external email servers (e.g. MS365 or Google) for both receiving and sending. Or leaving the receiving as-is but integrating with an external SMTP relay for email sending.

I’m actively working on improving AliasVault and iterating quickly, so all feedback is appreciated. :-)

> I am considering options where self-hosted users and cloud users (perhaps as a premium option) will be able to do this though.

yeah that sounds great! i think the one site i recall doing this acted as a fancy email forwarder and header exchanger; allowed the user to create N aliases, and it would forward them all to the users email. then a user could reply and the server would basically grab the body and convert the outbound headers to match the alias (i can never remember the website anymore though- and it lacked open sourceness or i'd have self hosted that if i could)

many iterations is the way to go - im one who always favors options and tinkering (and sometimes with minimal reading; extra challenge mode) - wont be for a month before i can attempt the self hosting bit but i do plan to try it (so my feedback will be very delayed)

thanks for doin all the hard work good luck and dont burn out!

Thank you for your kind words! Nice idea about the header exchanger, I’ll add it to my list to explore as an option for this feature.

I’m looking forward to your feedback whenever you have had the chance to try AliasVault. Much appreciated! :-)

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