I give up.
I tried left and right to try to install an email server so I could degoogle my life.
But therechnical barrier is thick and Google keeps adding more to it. Forget it. I can’t even get thru the installation process much less trying to get my shit off Google.
I figure, I don’t actually have any need for my email addresses. Just like my phone number. I never call anyone. I’m going to discourage my kids from using email at all. I’ll remind everyone I know that I don’t use email at every opportunity I get just like I remind people to not call me and that my phone number is not available.
Between spammers and Google, I just don’t need this headache in my life. My mom is much less technically savvy than the average pet. So Google will just siphon her data and when the megabits are full then you just delete the old stuff.
You don’t need it. No one will spend their life reading your emails when you’re gone or watching your videos or listening to your recordings or viewing your photos. There’s no need to worry about just deleting the pile of shit you’ve accumulated. I’m this done.
Why people keep spreading this misinformation? It’s plainly not true and I am the living proof of that.
Been using my email self hosted (on VPs) for decades now, never had serious issues at all. And it’s all my family primary addresses
I don’t say it’s impossible. It’s just not worth it 90% of the people, especially for beginners.
Because it works for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you have the experience, and done it at least once successfully, it’s “easy”. Compared to the average self-hosted configure and run a docker image and reverse proxy it’s objectively harder to run.
The issue is not running the individual components or servers, but that there’s infrastructure and to some extent crypto involved, which is just outside of the comfort zone for many. You tried to host it like any other thing on your homelab? Nope. Has your VPS been involved in spam? Enjoy the blacklist you’ll never find out about and the debugging why it doesn’t work. No experience in managing your DNS? Have fun getting DMARC/DKIM/SPF to work.
Theres just way more stuff that needs to be done, and a lot of it will fail silently.
I think the general gist is as beginner self hosters we get more and more comfortable too “easily spin up a docker webserver”
At some point we arrive at “what other services can i host” and email is a pretty obvious addition expecting it to at least not be more difficult then running nextcloud.
It may be doable but hell is it not a comparable challenge.
I fully agree …
Email server require to understand what and why you are doing. This is a steep step up from spinning docker containers.
Nothing against docker containers, I run quite a few myself… But indeed a successful email server is a different beast.
Many people also try self host it at home, and this is a serious issue with email due to the residential ip address as well.
But it can be done successfully and it’s a great feeling of accomplishment when you do it. And you learn way more than using containers
Also all containerized solutions for email require the understanding and additional steps like DNS done properly as well .
Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it is feasible
It comes with a lot of downsides