People repeat and repeat that email is hard but it's a legend. I have been self hosting for years on a residential ip and a random domain and it just works
this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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I self hosted for many years but gave up due to family members complaining about the occasional rejection. You are made of stronger stuff than I am, kudos.
You were ambitious providing it for your family
https://hub.docker.com/r/mailserver/docker-mailserver/
It just works. Once you got it working.
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If you want to give it another try, I've used Mailcow for about a decade now, after running on Exchange for twenty before that. Mailcow is way easier to set up and maintain than Exchange.
Key to it all is making sure you have your DKIM, dmarc and SPF records set up correctly, as well as a PTR with your internet provider if you can manage it, though that seems optional.
Never had a problem with the big providers bouncing my mails, just a couple little outfits that couldn't figure their filters out correctly.
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I also use mxroute. I paid for ten years at once. I only needed it because I wanted a catch-all and my previous hosting provider stopped allowing that.
My email solution for decades has been to have a mailbox separate from my email domain. Currently it’s FastMail. I then give out a different entity@example.com to each entity that needs my email address. I can then shut off (route to null) any address that starts getting spam.
I did order Run Your Own Mail Server because one day I’d like to try.
From the Kickstarter:
Running a mail server is an advanced systems administration skill, though. Mind tricks are not enough. You need to be able to operate a Unix-like operating system, understand logging and TLS, make DNS changes and adjust packet filters. RYOMS takes you through the protocol, configuring Postfix and Dovecot, and the DKIM and SPF and DMARC authentication protocols. (They’re not proper authentication protocols, but that’s what the Empire calls them.) It covers anti-spam measures, mail filters, and virtual domains, all at the command line and with pretty web interfaces. While the reference platforms are Debian and FreeBSD, the Postfix and Dovecot servers and assorted infrastructure work on any open source Unix.
This book does not contain absolutely everything you might ever need to understand running a mail server. Every environment has its oddities. But it does contain the core knowledge that every mail administrator must have. A sysadmin with this orientation can sort out their edges easily enough. Coping with edges is what we do.
I'm sorry to great it's been so frustrating for you. I know we all have our own tolerances for random junk and I'm glad you're making the right decision for you at this time.
I've been running mailinabox for almost two years now and it has been very good for me. Especially once I send some email to my family members' Gmail address and had them Mark it as "not spam" my deliverability has become very good.
Given I don't need too much privacy for generic E-Mails (I use my Tuta mail address for that) I'm using purelymail with advanced pricing for ~5€/year. (If I cared more about privacy in emails I'd use Tuta for 3€/month)
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| IMAP | Internet Message Access Protocol for email |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider |
| SMTP | Simple Mail Transfer Protocol |
| TLS | Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #4 for this comm, first seen 8th Jun 2026, 05:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Sorry you're having a bad time. Dockerized Mailu has been working great for me for about a year now. Difficult in the beginning but worth it. Glad I got though it.
Try tutamail or proton if you want to degoogle.
I don't self-host email but I don't use my own domain to have control over it. Look into FastMail and a custom domain. That's the happy path.
Similarly I gave up trying to keep up with the ever evolving mail server requirements. I'd wake up to find my emails weren't reaching people because Google and MS had strongarmed some change into place again.
These days I just use inbox.eu for my email.