Agreed. A few years back when moving my personal domain from a failing provider I considered running my own email server on Digital Ocean; they had some great t

Agreed. A few years back when moving my personal domain from a failing provider I considered running my own email server on Digital Ocean; they had some great tutorials on setting up various parts and I followed a HN recommended tutorial. I was already happy setting up LAMP with a nginx reverse proxy, how hard could it be - I got it setup, and realised two things: Keeping everything running without getting compromised was going to take way too long compared to the benefit. Two, Google and MS wouldn't accept my email - not even to myself when I whitelisted it - it's a crap shoot. Email has serious economies of scale and keeping such a critical system operational, on a small scale, was going to be some deal of stress. So I just went with my hosting providers Plesk-fronted setup, which matches your para.3 description.