Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

Basically it's the component that handles SMTP. Local delivery, pop3, imap, etc are almost always handed off to another component.

It's usually the difficult component because it's the service that other hosts will interact with. So if my imap service misbehaves, it annoys me until its fixed. If my MTA misbehaves, it's a lasting black mark against my host's reputation.

Fastmail does have more issues -- lack of fit and finish, their web app is sometimes buggy, their spam detection is buggy, it's imap, the lack of gmail style conversations being the fundamental unit of work in the app shines through sometimes, the gmail app on android does not interact well with fastmail, etc. However, they have recently fixed my biggest complaints: charging 11 cents per sms message to do 2fa and their rules interface looking like it was written as a my-first-javascript project. So it's actively improving. I like it enough that I recently re-upped for another two years.

They do enjoy one big advantage over google besides privacy: tech support! Like a human, that reads and responds to issues submitted through their site! I've contacted them twice with questions about setting up my domain and one other thing and I got replies, from someone who knew what she/he was doing, within an hour each time!

Also, they will do a catch-all address (eg xoxo@xoxo.com) which receives email from every address not specifically defined. Thus you can implement the best anti-spam technique: every email you give out is domain@xoxo.com which forwards to you@x0x0.com so you can tell exactly who sold or leaked your email address. eg latimes@x0x0.com was sold all over the place.

I had problems with mail acceptance only once, when one of my ISPs got me an IP address that was either used by a spammer in the past, or was in the same subnet that the spammers used. Other than that, no problems over the past 15 years, and I switched providers and systems at least three times over that time.

I'd encourage everyone to go ahead and do it. It isn't very hard, cost on the order of several dollars/euros a month, and you finally own your E-mail. I find it appalling that most people either use company E-mail (it isn't yours, anyone can read it, and if you part ways with the company you have a problem) or Google Gmail (Google does read it, trains its algorithms on it, and targets advertising based on that).

Don't worry too much about DKIM. It is no longer a good signal anyway, most spam gets it right.

So, if you're capable of it, go ahead and run your own mail server. I wish more people did it, so that we could avoid the "big guys" restricting E-mail. If more individuals ran their own servers, we could democratize E-mail again: it wouldn't be that easy to just reject E-mail for no good reason.

For the reference, the software I use right now is: Ubuntu LTS, postfix, postgrey, amavis, dovecot. I rent a virtual server at Hetzner.de.

I personally want to control my input addresses.

Hosting your own you can get funky wildcard postboxen.

Hosting your own you can archive all the mail without 3rd party approval.

I can see the advantage of the small amount of outbound being via someone else.