floof.org
What's the best way to set up my own email server? Should I set up my own email server?
when i still ran my own server, i used postfix and dovecot on a FreeBSD box. I also used mail-in-a-box a few years back which is a ready to go virtual machine that also gets you stuff like spam filtering and webmail.
however I had so so many problems with big providers (google, yahoo, microsoft) either sending all of my mail directly to spam or silently discarding it. didn’t matter how much DKIM or SPF i set up or how many different hosting providers (with clean IP blocks!) i tried. those large email services will not even engage with you to help debug unless your mail volume is in the thousands a day. so unless you have a compelling reason to run your own mail server i would advise against it, especially if you don’t intend to spend a few hours a month on maintenance.
now I just pay five bucks a month for ProtonMail and it’s not something I have to worry about anymore :)
The thing I recommend to people is that once you set up a domain and a server, you want to stick with it.
So whatever you do, plan on it being a long-haul. That will include paying for the domain, paying for hosting, getting a host that isn’t shit or sold to a company that is shit, and making sure it’s secure.
(For a lot of people here, that’s absolutely no problem, but I do bring that up whenever it’s discussed.)