Self-hosting

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) do 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 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 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

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'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.

I use my own domains with Proton.

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 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 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.

you are correct in being wary of self-hosting email, i cannot recommend it. you definitely want a static IP (as oppoased to updating DNS entries all the time), a solid spam setup, and multiple failsafes, mesning 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.

as others have pointed out, 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 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.

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.