Hello everyone, nice to meet you all.

This question was probably asked around here but is it really possible to be your own mail provider?

I think I’m experienced enough when it comes to homelabbing that I could take on something like this.

I THINK im aware of the technicalities, I did some research but it still begs the question, is it really worth it? would it be hard to build up a reputation so that your emails don’t land in spam folders?

  • WxFisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    13 hours ago

    It really depends on what you want to accomplish, your priorities, the amount of time and effort you are willing/able to put into it, and your risk appetite (not just privacy but also availability of your mail server).

    It is for sure one of the more challenging services to self-host, and IMO doesn’t offer a huge improvement over a hosted solution with your own domain from an actual security and privacy standards point since email is inherently insecure and non-privacy protecting without adding additional not-always-standard layers on top like PGP/GPG, SMIME, one-time passcode escrow systems, etc. that all have their own huge trade offs.

    Your self-hosted server will have downtime as well, some planned but also some unplanned. If your server is down, it can’t accept or send mail obviously which can be an issue (many services will try to deliver again after a back off period, but won’t try forever). Enterprises work around this with load balanced servers and running different services on fault tolerant infrastructure. That increases complexity quickly though and isn’t what most self hosters do AFAIK.

    • OppressedBread@lemmy.mlOP
      3·
      12 hours ago

      It really depends on what you want to accomplish.

      Data Control.

      while yes I’ve degoogled myself, I’m not very satisfied with the services I tried out (Proton, Tutanota etc) they always have some sort of compromise or sometimes their businesses model is too good to be true (at least for me) and being able to dictate what I need and what I don’t + implementing privacy and / or security solutions according to my needs is a big benefit in my book, my threat model isn’t something that worries me, I just like having full control and combat mass surveillance.

      Your self-hosted server will have downtime as well, some planned but also some unplanned.

      Strongly agree with this point and I am very aware of this, after all my homelab setup isn’t Enterprise grade and I’m expecting a lot of issues but knowing my usage, I’m willing to take these compromises.

      Thank you for this detailed post, I’ll take these things in mind when trying this out from a learning perspective.