> Do it for a few years and see how it feels. A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server.

> Do it for a few years and see how it feels. A thousand times this! Everyone even remotely technical or interested in tech should run their own mail server. For anyone too young to have known, this is how it used to be. Email was desktop (workstation) to desktop. Even when working at large corporations in the 90s, email arrived and was sent to the world directly from my personal workstation. For anyone worried about deliverability, keep in mind you can outsource the delivery part while still running your own email server for incoming email. I have experimented with using mailjet as an outgoing relay, for low volumes it was (maybe still?) free. I don't use a relay though, I deliver everything directly. But you don't have to if you worry about delivery. Why would you do this? For one thing, as parent post says, it gets you used to running the server. But much more importantly, it gives you complete control of incoming email. Never again is there any chance of google/yahoo/microsoft locking you out of receiving important emails (account resets, bank statements, etc) when you own the receiving server. Over time you can start relaxing the relaying and deliver directly to most places, only keep the relay to those who give you trouble coughmicrosoftcough. Or keep the outgoing relay forever if you prefer, but still reap all the benefits of owning the receiving side which is arguably more important.