I've self-hosted email since around 2000, it used to be relatively simple.. Your ISP would assign you a public static IP, and they'd apologize for blocking outg

I've self-hosted email since around 2000, it used to be relatively simple.. Your ISP would assign you a public static IP, and they'd apologize for blocking outgoing port 25 right there in their documentation, and also tell you, the address of their relay server, which you could configure as a "smarthost". Done. Email right there, on my harddisk, in my server, in my home. Time has a tendency to make some things worse, self-hosting your email was not spared. Some great stuff has been added over the years, DKIM, DMARC and SPF are all quite easy to manage, but the quality of internet providers has nosedived. Today the generally biggest problem of hosting anything online is that your ISP may not want to provide you with a public routable static IP. The second problem is even worse, and relates to email in specific, your ISP probably still blocks outgoing port 25, meaning that while your self-hosted server can RECEIVE emails well enough, it won't be able to send anything out. You need the aforementioned "smart host" for this, and your ISP might not provide one anymore, leaving their customer with an "Internet" connection that cannot do Internet related things, such as sending email! This is obviously an outrage, but apparantly there are not legislation defining minimum requirements for internet connections.. Imagine if electricity and water providers were allowed the same freedom.. "What? you want around 50 hz at around 230volt? Sorry sir, that's our premium package, what we deliver is between 23 and 120 hz at whatever the volt we want!" and your water company being "Oh, this definitely _IS_ water, guaranteed 25% of it!"