If you do not want to (completely) self-host but do want freedom with your custom domain then Migadu is a superb choice, it’s like heaven/nirvana/paradise 🎇 for email admins 😀 https://migadu.com/

And you can technically still do some sort of part-time self host. The very difficult part of self-hosting email these days is the sending part (and the big and smaller tech bros rejecting your emails), not the receiving part. So if you want to learn, you can self host the receiving part, store your email at home or on some rented server and then use Migadu to send your emails out. Migadu has a feature called MX proxy which can be used for this part-time self hosting take.

Use Proton Mail. You have to pay a monthly subscription to Proton Unlimited, but you’ll be able to set a custom domain. Proton is one of the best email providers right now. It’s end-to-end encrypted, and it’s based in Switzerland so privacy is almost guaranteed.

Consider self-hosting HALF the service. Something like this:

Outbound

local Postfix on dynamic IP → relay (optional and configurable) → recipient

You can configure Postfix to use a relay depending on the recipient. E.g. if you need to reach alice@outlook.com, MS will reject your dynamic IP. But if you have bob@outlook.com, you can tell Postfix to relay via MS servers using your bob@outlook.com account for all *@outlook.com recipients. And yes, you can still use a different vanity address in the FROM: field, like Gobbel2000@nerds.org, if that’s what you want to be known as. You can freetype whatever your want as the FROM: address if you use a good MUA like mutt.

You can even hack postfix to send over Tor. And you can make it possible to support *.onion email addresses, which is something that no non-self-hosted service offers.

When I email someone for the 1st time, say it’s alice@someunknownneverseensvc.xyz, I first configure my mail server to relay to @someunknownneverseensvc.xyz over Tor. If that fails (and it often does), I configure Postfix to directly send to that server from my dynamic IP (or VPN if I have that running). That’s the default, in fact. If that fails, then I can cave-in and compromise my privacy by relaying through a 3rd party, if I choose. Most importantly, I am in control. If I really want to send the msg but I really do not want an additional MitM, I may be able to create an acct on @someunknownneverseensvc.xyz and then use that as a relay to recipients on that host.

Rise-up has an onion SMTP server. So if you have a riseup acct you could use their onion as a relay.

Inbound

(your acct @ rise-up or disroot.org or danwin1210.de or autistici) → POP3 onion using fetchmail → local Postfix → dovecote or procmail → local files read by your MUA of choice

You avoid a lot of complexity and labor by not maintaining a WAN-listening server. Though you still have a fair amount of effort in configuring your junk, you need not do all the configuration up front. You can do it on a piecemeal per-outbound msg basis to spread your config effort out over time. Of course you need to use a forwarding service or do some DNS arrangements if you want an address that does not tie you to an ESP.

This approach relieves you of the reliability problem… you need not maintain a server always online, up, and listening. But of course you lose some privacy because all your inbound traffic is seen by your ESP. At least you can potentially circumvent your ESP on outbound mail.

BTW, you might want to crosspost to !email@lemmy.sdf.org

(update) my complaint with Postfix: no Tor support out of the box

Postfix needs some hacking to get it to work over Tor. As old as Postfix and Tor both are, they should work together out of the box.

If you decide to run everything yourself, Run Your Own Mail Server by Michael W Lucas is a recent and comprehensive book on the topic.

But for most people in your situation, email aliases (forwarders) for your domain pointed at an email provider is the best option. I’ve used this setup for decades. On top of being able to swap the back end when you want, you can also spin up aliases whenever you want, so you could decide each entity you interact with a different email address. That way if it starts getting spam, you know who betrayed you.

Currently, my top two email provider recommendations are FastMail and Proton.

My web host went from allowing a catch-all, so I could just make up aliases on the fly to making me configure each alias manually. So I also use MXRoute’s forwarding service to enable catch-alls on a couple domains. I used a coupon and paid for like ten years upfront.

I started using https://purelymail.com/ because they’re $10/year. Been happy with them, but I don’t use/need any fancy features. Hosted on AWS, if you care about that. Their domain instructions are https://purelymail.com/docs/domainDocs

I’ve been hosting my own email server having 4 domains (one is business-related) for 6 years. I don’t have any problems, because I know what I do.

In case it’s a help. The stack is: Postfix (SPF-support), Dovecot (Sieve), OpenDKIM, OpenDMARC and rspamd. I also recommend fail2ban, because an open infrastructure is hammered on very often.

Of course TLS is needed, so nginx with acme.sh as combo does the job fine.

Backups are also essential. I like restic. CLI tools are automated very easy.

I don’t think, it’s much. My setup is very generic, but maybe it’s already too overwhelming for some people.

A lot of providers support custom domains, I’m currently using mailbox.org, used proton, zoho and google in the past. The process is usually just adding some dns records to link your domain to your mail provider and to verify that the domain belongs to you, every provider should have a list of instructions on how to do it.

I have hosted my own email before. It can get a bit annoying and it’s not the most reliable.

I definitely recommend at least starting with your own domain. That way you can move emails easily. It’s relatively straightforward, although if you have it on a gmail account you need to disable 2fa for some reason…

I use my own domains with Proton.

you are correct in being wary of self-hosting email, i cannot recommend it. a lot can go wrong. besides downtime (already pretty bad by itself) i have known cases of domains and/or server IPs being blacklisted/spamlisted on multiple big mailservers (microsoft, google) because of bad administration, effectively killing the self-hosted setup.

you would definitely want a static IP (as opposed to updating DNS entries all the time), a solid spam setup, and multiple failsafes, meaning not just data backup, but also mechanisms for preventing downtime like secondary machines. it really is only worth it if multiple people make use of it and you have multiple dedicated admins, in my opinion. but in that case, i think it can be very cool.

as others have pointed out, a good (and in some sense the canonical) option is to use something like mailbox.org with your own domain, or other providers, or even a webhosting package from netcup or hetzner or similar. these are all solid, and you have professional support.

side note: downside is, your data there is more snoopable, less so with something like proton. but that shouldn’t be your biggest worry, since emails always exist not just on your server, but also on the other side of the communication, and you have no guatantees for privacy there. e2ee (like pgp) is what you would need in that case.

I use my own domain. I do not host my own email myself though. For email providers, you have several options, Migadu being one of them. But pretty much all premium email providers nowadays allow you to use your own domain.

For aliases, I would recommend something like Addy. It is basically a forwarding service, that hides your real email address. It is really cool. Spamgourmet used to do this back in the day, but nowadays it is mostly dead.

As others have said already, email is one of the few things I would avoid self-hosting.

You could check with your domain / DNS host if they also offer email. OVH for example gives a free 5GB email for every domain. Otherwise there are of course email providers that let you use your own domain.

I do this!

I use purelymail, it’s only $10 a year and self described as a “Cheap, no-nonsense email” i’ve been using this service for a little over a year with my own domain names and haven’t had any issues yet. I love it. They have an easy to follow tutorial for setting up your own domain names to work with their email

I have multiple domains (and many email addresses) that I pay a host (Namecheap) for. I have the lowest priced annual hosting package. And email is administered through cPanel, not the separate email service they offer. cPanel is very easy to use and you get spam controls. I also fetch my pop3 mail with Thunderbird. I have done this for 15+ years and rarely have I had an issue or missed email. cPanel is part of your hosting package.

I hosted my email myself with mailu iirc. Once I had it setup and working correctly my only problem was that any mails I send would end in the recipients spam folder (Probably because the IP of the server I used was from an ASN that allowed anyone to host a mail server without restrictions).

I moved to mxroute a few months ago and payed 30$ for 3 years. They let you bring your own domains (unlimited at no charge). I’m happy and didnt have any problems so far but their website for ordering is borderline unusable if you want to compare their plans/prices.