Hello everyone, nice to meet you all.
This question was probably asked around here but is it really possible to be your own mail provider?
I think I’m experienced enough when it comes to homelabbing that I could take on something like this.
I THINK im aware of the technicalities, I did some research but it still begs the question, is it really worth it? would it be hard to build up a reputation so that your emails don’t land in spam folders?


I’ve seen SMTP servers self hosted alongside WordPress just for sending invite emails. There’s definitely some openssl keygen and DNS magic that needs to happen. Then it took almost a month before email sending really worked. There was a while where it would show up in spam for most recipients while gmail would flat out ignore it.
If you’re not scared of the openssl/DNS magic and are willing to let it sit for months before actually migrating then yes.
Was this a newly registered domain? I’m curious if using something older will let me skip most the spam bullshit, or if I’d have to just deal with asking people to click “not spam” first
The domain wasn’t that old but I don’t think that was the issue. I’m pretty sure it was about the age of the DMARC DNS record.
IIRC you must create an SSL keypair, give the keys to the SMTP server, and encode public key in a of DNS record. But way more Byzantine.