I have been thinking of completely going off Google. I have a Nextcloud server for documents and contacts and calendar. Thinking of moving mail away too. Currently I am conflicted between hosting my own email server. On searching only advice I am getting is not to do it.
How many of the homelabers do host their own email server? What software do you use? Any tips.
I do, Postfix and Dovecot. Mine’s got 10 years of history so I’ve been spared being blocked everywhere.
Most will tell you the software side is not too bad these days but the constant fighting to get your emails through can be really rough.
Personally I find it useful if only for the sake of just registering every service to its own unique email address so I can track who got my data where, and I get the privacy of Google not knowing every site I’m registered with. I still use my Gmail when I want to be sure it goes through.
I really don’t send that many emails so it works pretty well for me.
I did for a while but stopped because it’s a massive pain and far easier to just use proton or something.
I host my own, on a server in a data center on IP space owned by a friend of mine. I use mailcow for software.
Incoming mail is very doable.
Outgoing mail is hard because no one will your trust your server, the easy way is let someone else send your mail.
People get stressed about your receiving server being down sometimes, but this actually not a big deal. Mail senders typically will try for 48 hours or so to deliver mail, and if it doesn’t get delivered it will be sent back to the sender with a “could not be delivered” message. Very little gets actually lost.
