My experience with hosting mail was very good. I host my mail using Mailu, which is just a docker compose file and premade scripts for the usual mail stack software (Postfix, Dovecot, Nginx etc.). I hosy it on my home network using a raspberry pi. I score 9.8 on mail tester and my mail rarely ever lands in spam.

In total I spent maybe 3 hours setting everything up including my domain and 2 hours debugging issues. I honestly recommend self hosting mail.

Hi, email self hoster here, though with a unique circumstance. Self hosting email is fine given you know what you’re doing or have a unique circumstance like I do, I run my own ASN (internet thing allowing you to directly connect with other internet networks like your ISPs) and you can obtain your own IP addresses that you control yourself, meaning you lose the issue of ISPs giving you crap IPs, or your hosting provider being blacklisted because of someone else. I never get sent to spam as a result. Self hosting email is a doable thing, you just need more control over whatever IPs you use than most people will have at home

So self hosting yes, but not for the average person with a residential ISP IP address.

There’s no shortage of people who will tell you it’s okay to self host email… in fact, you’re probably not hearing all of them, because some will inevitably get routed to spam.

I’m sure that’s the prevailing advice… I’ve been self-hosting mine for a while now. It’s been lovely. 0 issues outside of some “special” users… Who also are family… So they’re just “special” anyway.

Been very hands off for me. And when shit goes “wrong” (I can think of 2 major incidents in the past couple years?)… I get the opportunity to actually fix it… rather than sitting on my thumbs crying that my emails don’t work.

From a different Lemmy post I wrote a month ago:

I also host my own mail and there’s been little issues.

Microsoft is a pain in the ass if you’re in an IP space they don’t like like DigitalOcean. Which is ironic because they have the worst spam filter by far in the industry.

If you want to get through to everyone you will have to:

• Use a “good” TLD ( not .to, not .xyz, …)
• Don’t use cloud platforms that are regularily used for spam (mostly DigitalOcean)
• Use SPF
• Use DMARC
• Use DKIM
• Use a PTR record
• Don’t make an open relay by accident
• Use proper ports and certificates
• Register an abuse account at the big players (Google, Microsoft, …)
• Don’t use an dynamic IP
• Keep it up to date
• Minimize downtime

I can’t recommend mailcow enough, it makes setting up a mail server a breeze.

https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized

Use the MXToolbox to verify your server(s).

https://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx

Honestly, if you want it, go for it. It’s a good learning experience!

I’ve been running postfix+dovecot for 10 years now and I’ve had very very few issues, I wouldn’t know it’s not Gmail or some other big provider. Kinda pain to set it up, especially if your provider hands you an IP that’s been used for spam previously, but it’s been smooth sailing since for me. Mails always delivered, DKIM/DMARC and everything.

Here’s a helpful site to test deliverability: https://www.mail-tester.com/

Mine scores 10/10

E: Also, surprisingly zero spam despite my addresses being quite public.

Is the prevailing advice still not to bother with self-hosting email?

From someone who never stopped: YES.

99.95% spam, and no amount of filters and training can do as good a job as Gmail (as much as I hate and would like to get away from Gmail)

I want to turn it off so bad, but fomo, that one email from that one person I knew 25 years ago who only has that email address … fml.