Selfhosted

Yes, I still run my own email server. It is not for the faint of heart, but once it's configured and your IP reputation is clean, it's mostly smooth sailing. I have not had any deliverability problems to date, initial setup/learning period notwithstanding.

If you're not scared away yet, here are some specific challenges you'll face:

• SMTP ports are typically blocked by many providers as a spam prevention measure. Hosting on a residential connection is often a complete non-starter and is becoming more difficult on business class connections as well (at least in the US, anyway).
• If you plan to host in a VPS, good luck getting a clean IPv4 address. Most are on one or more public blacklists and likely several company-specific ones (cough Microsoft cough). I spent about 2 weeks getting my new VPS's IP reputation cleaned up before I migrated from the old VPS.
• Uptime: You need to have a reliable hosting solution with minimal power/server/network downtime.
• Learning Curve: Email is not just one technology; it's several that work together. So in a very basic email server, you will have Postfix as your MTA, Dovecot as your MDA, some kind of spam detection and filtering (e.g. SpamAssassin), some kind of antivirus to scan messages/attachments (e.g. Clamd), message signing (DKIM), user administration/management, webmail, etc. You'll need to get all of these configured and operating in harmony.
• Spam prevention standards: You'll need to know how to work with DNS and create/manage all of the appropriate records on your domain (MX, SPF, DMARC, DKIM records, etc). All of these are pretty much required in 2023 in order for messages from your server to reach your recipient.
• Keeping your IP reputation clean: This is an ongoing challenge if you host for a lot of people. It can only take one or two compromised accounts to send a LOT of spam and land your IP/IP block on a blacklist.
• Keeping up with new standards: When I set my mail server up, DMARC and DKIM weren't required by most recipient servers. Around 2016, I had to bolt on OpenDKIM to my email stack otherwise my messages ended up in the recipient's spam folder. -Contingency Plan: One day you may just wake up and decide it's too much to keep managing your own email server. I'm not there yet, but I've already got a plan in place to let a bigger player take over when the time comes.

It’s a great learning exercise but challenging to get right and ensure your deliverability and basically impossible from a residential-grade IP address (if you have a business class static IP at home you could pull it off).

I ran an email server for decades but gave in and pay to host my email now.

If google decides you’re a bad guy it’s such a pain to crawl back from that and I prefer my email to just work.

It's bad out there when it comes to hosting your own email server. This blog post shows somebody's experience in detail, and it's worth reading. https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

It's all so sad.

Hosting a mail server is really easy. Making sure Hotmail, Gmail and others accept your emails is a nightmare.

I don't host my own email, I just delegate my email management to a small provider.

I used to run my own mail server about 2 years ago but unfortunately the spam got so bad I didn't have the time to manage all the filters. I moved over to ProtonMail since I can still use my own domain there. So I guess I would say it's not really worth it also it really sucks if your power is out and not having access to sent your power company a strongly worded email.

Despite my willingness to self-host almost everything, e-mail remains the last frontier for me. Keeping abreast of standards, keeping up today, avoiding implications in abuse and many, many smaller issues abound ... and that's despite my fixed IP and ISP willing to set up a reverse-DNS for me.

Instead I've gone with a paid email provider that I'm REALLY happy with.

Not worth the hassle - best compromise is to get your own domain but use a provider like fastmail to host it.

If they turn sour you can move your domain to another mail host.

I host my own mailserver, and to be honest it's pretty painless. Usually I just let it run without giving it any thought. It's on rare occasions that I need to put a bit of work into improving the inbound spam scanning.

Selfhosting does need quite some knowledge of the software stack and several additional protocols to set them up correctly to get your outgoing email delivered. Also, like already mentioned in another comment, you absolutely need an IP address from a non-blacklisted subnet (I think most VPS providers will be okay, residential definitely not).

My software stack: Arch Linux (soon NixOS), Postfix, Dovecot, rspamd, opendkim, opendmarc.

Additional techniques configured: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, DNSSEC.

As you can see it's quite a lot, and I've been doing for more than 20 years now, so my opinion can be a bit skewed. I'd say go for it if selfhosting is a hobby.

Just take a look at https://docs.mailcow.email/

This runs from a small box with everything included. It gives you all the tools and config needed for running a secure and feature rich email service. Webmail, some sort of exchange emulation, webcalender on top of a solid postfix/dovecot install with rspamd as spam filter. Everything is configurable via a nice web UI.

After 15y running my own mail service and editing a lot of config files, I use this piece of free and open software and find it very good. All you need is a box somewhere in the internet. Running from a homelab will instantly fail, expect you have a static ip.

I'm using openbsd with dovcot, opensmtpd on a pi. I used mailhardener to get it scoring well. I've had no issues with it getting flagged.

Obligatory PSA: ProtonMail isn't any more secure than Gmail and is likely a honeypot scheme crafted by government agencies: https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/

I know the title of that sounds clickbaity, but they cite their sources. It's worth the read for those curious about ProtonMail's history and their CEOs.

@DidacticDumbass
Yes I run my own mailserver. I have done it for the last 15 years or so.

I'm also running my own Friendica instance.

I want to do a setup where i use mailcow at home for receiving emails but Amazon ses SMTP for sending, it's possible? Looks like it is, but i didn't investigate it

I've been self-hosting e-mail for over 15 years and hope to continue doing so. Although it's being made increasingly difficult by big tech players. I wrote about it here: https://proycon.anaproy.nl/posts/rant-against-centralising-e-mail/

I used to run my own mail server many, many years ago (early 2000s), but today it's a lot more difficult. I personally don't think it's worth it, but I do have my own domain that I can host anywhere I choose. At the moment, I'm using Fastmail. Lots of nice features, and no complaints.

I use Cloudflares email routing.

Point my domains name servers to Cloudflares and enable email routing. I can then create any email address in that domain and have it forward to any of my email addresses. Works great when signing up for accounts. The only thing you can't do is fire off email FROM said email address

Edit: can to can't

Yes, and I love it.

I use mailjet as a proxy on outgoing emails so that I get fewer of my sent messages rejected, which works.

It was a pain to setup but it's treating me very well.

Jep. running a linux mailserver for now 20+ years

its now running postfix :-), in a vm on proxmox...

Not likely worth it. Primary reason is that the large federated email services are skeptical of email from services such as your proposed self hosting solution and may simply not deliver the mail you send. This is to mitigate against spammers setting up bespoke servers.

There are a bunch of other things that could go wrong if you don’t set everything up perfectly, but even if you do, this would be a big problem.

Better off using a custom domain with a big provider. Fewer headaches. I like Fastmail, but many others are great too.

Only people who hate themselves

Nope. It can’t really be self hosted anymore, as having a residential IP is a straight track to the spam folder. It can be done if you also pay for a mail relay service, but then what’s the point of self hosting when you need to rely on a cloud service anyways.

As much as I enjoy self hosting my own services, email just seems like more trouble than it's worth. I let Protonmail take care of that for me.