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.
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 fully agree with you: it’s NOT easy. And you must understand what you do. It’s not just deploy a container and run happy.
I might say this is the first serious step for a selfhoster, something that goes over and beyond just hosting a service for yourself and fun, since it federates (modern term fur how email works) with the outside world.
Are you scared of hosting email? don’t do it. You want to learn and improve your skills and you are happy with running the risks associated? go for it.
Anyway tools like stalwart and mailcow do provide full instructions for DKIM/DMARK and DNS records that you only need to follow, so today there are easier options than the “old days”.
Anyway you don’t have to do it on your primary email from day one, just use a test account/domain and see how it goes. Keep using your gmail account and spin it up on a secondary domain, if it works good… switch over in 6 months or 2 years as you are confortable. OTherwise, keep gmail and stop.