I know the adage that self-hosting email is hard. I use a third party smtp server to send emails for my Lemmy instance in order to guarantee delivery, for example.
However, other than potential uptime, what are the disadvantages to setting up self-hosted incoming email?
Incoming email is like 99% of my email usage. I’m happy to use a third party mail provider for outgoing email, but don’t see why I shouldn’t simply host incoming email myself.
Thank you <3
I have tried for years to self host my email, but finding an upstream SMTP server that will accept your custom domain is pretty much impossible these days. Plus a lot of mainstream servers (Gmail, Hotmail etc.) block pretty much everything except mail sent from another mainstream account.
Every time I have tried, I get back SMTP responses that my domain isn’t trusted, my IP is not trusted enough or they just blackhole my traffic.
This article sums it up well:
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html