No.

I would say absolutely not.

I selfhost everything I want except for email, just not worth it imo.

have been running my own mail server(s) since early 2000. If Hillary can, you can :)

but of course there are downsides as well, you need to expose services from the outside, you need to allow SNMP inbound, you need to deal with DNS and various mail security enhancements, deal with anti-spam and do mailware/virus scanning etc. on top of that you would need to consider some kind of “high” availability. if your server goes down = no emails…

for me its worth it, my exchange server have been running for the last 10 years or so, I publish both webmail and use the outlook and/or mail in my phone.

I have multiple domain (10+) and run my own DNS.

The only thing I can’t do is send emails… I have to rely on my ISP for outgoing emails, but that’s a good thing as generally my emails are not marked as spam as they comes from a trusted source.

I have an Exchange vm setup the last 3-4 years now. I use smtp2go for outgoing email. Works really well. I primarily use the system for alerts emails and mailing lists I use. If it breaks its an annoyance but nothing critical. I have a mail filter in front that all incoming mail goes through.

I’ve hosted my own email for 2 years now. Using proxmox mail gateway on a 5€ hetzner VPS. it relays mail to my mail server which I host at home. I’ve dealt with my home public IP changing every now and then with 2 simple scripts. SPF, DKIM, DMARC is all set up.

All in all, it’s relatively low maintenance. PMG makes a good job filtering all the crap and I have yet to receive and actual spam in my inbox (I only had a couple false positives).

I documented the whole setup, can share if you want.

As a fun project, yes.

As an actual day2day email, no.

Unless u have actual redundancy with 24/7 uptime and static IP, it may caused missed emails. Even if u do, the price is a factor u may need to consider.

I heard that it is a thing you most likely do not want to have set up

If you’re planning to run for political office, I’d recommend against it. /s

The biggest problem you’ll run into is sending email from your residential internet connection. Most, if not all, residential ISPs either 100% block or severely throttle port 25 outbound traffic to cut down on spam. Even if you’re able to find an ISP that doesn’t block 25 outbound, if the reverse zone lookup indicates that it’s a residential ISP most spam filtering solutions are going to flag all of your messages as spam.

Always fun to do if learning but in production even for personal i would recommend you pay for something like startmail or mailfence and use their custom domain features.

i learned exchange on my own and even had dreams of doing multi tenant exchange until exchange online came and jerked off all over that dream

I’ve run my own mail server for over 15 years. If you’re going to do it, put it on a VM at a reliable cloud provider, such as AWS. You wouldn’t want your email to go down while you’re on vacation for a week with no way of fixing it. You need to make sure you use a static IP that you keep forever, because your mail server builds reputation and the IP must not have any reputation of spam that has landed it on block lists.

It’s not difficult if you let reuse someone else’s hard work to make it secure and keep it updated. This project is fantastic: https://mailinabox.email/

Would I recommend it? It’s more rational to bring your own domain to have it hosted by Microsoft or Google, but doing it yourself is more fun and flexible, and possibly cheaper depending on how many users and domains you will be hosting.

waste of time IMO. Most messages will not make it through spam filters because of a bunch of reasons. Just writing your friends would be pointless.

I set one up for a while and it was a royal PITA! I have since switched to a managed email account using my own domain. So much less trouble. It’s just not worth it in my opinion.

Go for it for fun, but understand that FEW EMAILS WILL GET DELIVERED.

It’s nearly impossible to develop a good IP reputation, and Microsoft and other mega-email-providers will deliver all your mail to junk.