On 3/28/26 12:05 PM, Karen Lewellen wrote:

If I should start a different thread for this, let me know.
Still, may I ask how hard it is to host one's own mail server?
I have reasons to ask, would even pay s someone to do this for me,
where my professional domains are concerned.
Best,
Kare

I just recently set up my mail.gitcoding.net email server on a vps slice
I'm renting from a datacenter for $3 USD per month. They let me choose
from Debian, Ubuntu, etc, etc, I pick Debian always. They provide root
ssh login. I ssh into it and perform my server hardening, then install postix+dovecot. That is only the beginning of quite a journey. I would
much rather run it on my on-premises server but I'm too limited what I
can host via my isp.
How hard was it? Probably depends largely on prior experience. I did it
to get my feet wet, but do not yet feel prepared to provide it as a
service for other users. I blew an entire Saturday setting it all up.
Usage after set-up was completed has been wonderful.
My main motivation for starting this journey: First I used free yahoo
and gmail accounts. The advertising and thunderbird connection troubles
were beyond my tolerance levels.
Next, I got a mail address from a small business that speciallizes in providing secure mail for a reasonable subscription, I still use it, but experienced a major deliverability problem with one single corporation I
do business with. (Newark Electronics) Every time I sent Newark
Electronics an email, my mail provider's server got blacklisted.
I bought a domain and connected it to a paid titan mail. That is
currently my primary mail address. From time to time there are
shenanigans with their spam filter switching to a high level and
silently blocking about 75% of my valid incoming mail. The deal-breaker
was when they wouldn't allow me to subscribe to debian-user.
At which point I set up my mail server.
Finally, I also got an email account with disroot.org I have not used it
much yet, but the little I've used it I don't find anything wrong with
it. What I really like about them is they seem to be one of the small
players in the market. You get to communicate with a real human when
there are problems, but only during business hours ;)
I find that so refreshing after on other sites arguing with chatbots
which always respond with a link to the same old irrelevant help page.


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