Self-host your mail server
a day ago
- Self-hosting an email server is possible in 2026, despite warnings about blocklists and delivery issues; email is inherently open and decentralized.
- Home hosting requires a static IPv4 address (not blacklisted), no CGNAT, ability to set PTR records, and open ports (25, 143, 465, 587, 993); short internet outages (<40% downtime) are handled by sender retries.
- Recommended mailserver software includes docker-mailserver (easy Docker deployment), Stalwart, Mailcow, or manual setup; essential DNS records are SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MX, and PTR.
- Spam is effectively managed using rspamd with a local LLM (e.g., Gemma 4 12B) for email classification, providing Gmail-level filtering without relying on cloud services.
- Choose Thunderbird as a mail client; maintenance involves auto-updates, backups, and recovery testing. Self-hosting gives control and supports data sovereignty.