Buy European

also, depending on where you live, it could get quite hard to keep up with crossing the t's and doting the i's legally. some countries want you to keep erchives for x years, some want you to answer to police requests within a short time, others do not consider hijacking as an excuse for a nefarious use of the server of which you are responsible etc. I chose to host a server once, was 8 hours late on an update. got fucked but finaly got my case heard. I'm now using a lan only facing nextcloud server coupled with a VPN connection when I'm out and only use my domain for mail (outsourced the server though).

It's worth noting that hosting your own email server is more difficult than it might seem. The server aspects aren't too difficult, but due to the proliferation of spam, there are a ton of other things you need to set up in order for your emails to not be constantly filtered or rejected by other mail servers. If you're curious, feel free to mess around, but I wouldn't switch to using it for critical stuff until you've tested it very thoroughly.

When buying a domain name you can also consider buying one that's controlled by a non-US registrar. e.g. .dev is controlled by Charleston Road Registry which is Google-related. Same for .com which is controlled by Verisign. Unfortunately certain TLDs have an easier time with spam filters. Alternatives are of course .eu,.ευ,.ею or your local TLD like .pl (Poland) which is likely to be controlled by some nation wide IT authority in your country.

It's no big deal but a domain is a commitment, since if you stop renewing it it gets bought out by some shady company.

Thank you for the reminder

Shout-out to mailcow-dockerized, a GPL-3 licensed setup of postfix/dovecot etc with sogo as webmail. Managed by a German IT company, I've been running it in production for more than a year, serving a handful of domains. Very happy with it.

https://mailcow.email/

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

Oh, and they're on mastodon as well: https://mailcow.social/@doncow

Glesys has some preconfig servers I think. And an epost solution. https://glesys.se/

I have ben using Google workspace for like 10 years now, since the time they give free accounts for 10 users. I also have Gmail and Hotmail accounts. Years ago had an european mail accounts (telefónica), but the service was shutdown.

I am now on my way to degoogle: Just bought a new domain for some services, installed lemmy, and try a password recover and... the mail reached inbox in my workspace domain, with just an warning because I have no DKIM in the new domain.

I have ben working for hosting companies since 2010, and I know this is the exception: maintaining a selfhosted mail server is mostly a nightmare... I would like to explore the option to selfhost and them use a relay, but also seen this yesteday : https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/home on ! [email protected]... Will investigate and may try ir.

If nothing else work, I will switch to Proton.

I just pray for Mistral to catch up Gemini...

(By the way, this is my first post on lemmy, so hello Lemmy!)

You can use tools like Stallwart and Mailcow qnd even Mail-in-a-box to make mail hosting a LOT easier. One does not simply configure ClamAV as a milter and chaining DKIM validation too late I the process is a great recipe for random spam status issues.

You just have to accept that nobody using Google's or Microsoft's email servers will receive your email in their inbox ever again. All of your outgoing email will be marked as spam, unless you slowly trickle non-spam emails at rates of dozens to hundreds a day to various email servers to build up IP + domain reputation. If you're not a marketing company, that will probably not happen. That includes almost every company, big or small, local or international, using their own domain names. Customer service will likely ignore you and email that doesn't get delivered will be considered your fault. Of course you can fight against the system by still using an independent email server (like I do) but know that you're a tiny drop in an ocean of The Big Three email servers.

Also, reserve four to eight hours a month for maintenance and dealing with problems. Easy to do as a student, challenging as a parent.

Futhermore, for your domain name, make sure to check the requirements. You may lose the rights to your domain when you emigrate, or when your country ceases to exist (unlikely) or leaves the economic union controlling the domain (like the British people with .eu domains). You may find the Taliban in control of your domain one day (because you chose the funny .af ccTLD). Also pick a TLD that's not full of spam already, like .biz or the ones that used to be free (.tk).