You can host your own email server. I think you still need to pay for a domain name though.

I also hear tons of people recommend not hosting an email server because it’s a ton of upkeep and a vector for malicious actors to compromise your server.

Im guessing since you’re asking the question you probably wouldn’t want to make this your new part time job.

You can run your own mail server. I generally don't recommend it, it's a pain.

You can also host your own domain at somewhere like proton mail, so you have your own @whatever.com

I worked in enterprise IT for years, including running mail servers, and ran my own personal servers for my home domains for years. The best feeling ever was outsourcing that responsibility. If you want to do it for fun or learning with a test domain, I'd say go for it. If you want to do this for email that might matter, I would not do that. For an illustration on why, research email delivery and email reputation topics. It's not that everything is too complex, but you can easily have something to wing without ever knowing and you just lose email.

If you want a good middle lane, I moved my personal domains to mxroute after buying a lifetime plan. I also know and have tested failing over to a second provider if needed. This let's you make as many accounts and aliases as you want, without dealing with all the delivery issues personally.

I'd suggest you start with a simple static web server if you're looking for a good beginner project. Use something like Nginx, and just set it up on your local network at first, then work out how to harden it, and open it up to the real internet. There's a lot less to learn for this usage case, and it's less likely to get you into trouble.

I say that, because, after reading through the thread, it seems you are hoping to find an (educational) use for an old computer. I did Linux and Unix admin professionally for 15 years, for some famous brands. I would NOT recommend setting up a mail server as a first project - it's complex in ways you will never expect, and will require learning skills and knowledge that are very specific and you literally can't "start small and build up" because a lot of the things you don't know yet will get you into big trouble. Essentially, it's not too hard to set up the server software, and your hardware is certainly capable of running this task, but making it safe and secure IS hard these days - especially with all the encryption and anti-spam setups you have to learn how to do.

You can run your own mail servers no problem. Takes about 15 minutes to get going at its simplest level. Now, there's a whole bunch of problems you'll run into as soon as you open it to the internet, but that's a separate topic.

If you just want to use a custom domain: register any domain, find a mail host that supports custom domains (most do with a paid subscription), and setup your DNS records to point to wherever that service is. Now you have mail coming to "beepbopboop@whateverdomainyouregistered.com"

If you have never touched a linux command line and played with a Linux server, self-hosting your email server will be too complex and you should start there (by getting a cheap VPS for example).

But if you have a server, a domain name, and some knowledge about self-hosting, there are some easy and FOSS "all in one" solutions like mailcow (https://mailcow.github.io/mailcow-docs/) that bundles all the required software in docker and gives you an admin panel to create mailboxes. It also tells you what DNS records to create and checks if you've done it right.

It's not as hard to manage an email server as many say, just make regular backups to restore if you do break the setup, and don't worry too much about downtime, generally other servers will keep retrying to send you your emails for quite some time (hours to days) before giving up.

Main problems with hosting your own mailserver:

• Spam protection is not as good as with hosted options because you just don't have the same scale of data
• Mail deliverability issues - Generally once you have setup everything (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) on a dedicated IP that is not from a residential ISP, it stays working but sometimes you find out that say live.com/hotmail simply won't accept your mail and there is nothing you can do.

I do it, it's not a complicated setup, I don't even know what mailserver I used whatever Debian recommended (exim or postfix) , dovecot for Server->Recpient. I am a little more paranoid about my server than I would be otherwise (outbound firewall, apparmor profiles for anything that is listening, monit to alert on high CPU usage (anti spam sometimes goes crazy), but not anything that is too much effort (e.g I haven't gone full hog with SELINUX, etc)

Yes, it's possible. I use postfix virtual domains to direct entire subdomains to my personal mailbox, which I then host with dovecot-imap. For spam reasons I cannot in practice recommend redirecting an entire domain like @blahblahblah.com but subdomains like @addresses.blahblahblah.com or something like that works fine (and can be very secure, since if you're using it for account signups it makes it very difficult to predict what email you've used for a given account making it difficult for someone attempting to reset your password or attempt to find re-used passwords across different accounts for example).

I will agree with everyone else that starting a new mail server, especially in this day and age, is a challenging and complicated task with many obscure and tedious steps and constant maintenance and vigilance and little room for error. I have been doing this for over 20 years, and even I have been blacklisted countless times for small mistakes and configuration errors, and while an increasing number of blacklists are automatic and will eventually remove you once the problem is fixed, getting off certain blacklists is difficult and in the case of some of them, effectively impossible without paying money or coordinating with your ISP (and often paying money to them instead to vouch for you, or to give you permission to even run an un-blocked email server in the first place).

Running a mail server requires a massive investment in trust and reputation, that presents a significant and possibly insurmountable barrier to entry for a novice, and it is absolutely jumping into the very deepest possible end of shark infested waters. I won't say it's impossible, but you're going to have a very difficult time if you expect to be able to use it even for full-time personal use.

I will say that receiving is usually easier than sending, so if you just want to receive emails on your own server and store them there, and then send using an "official" address (not on your server) that might work better. But it's still super complicated, and having a setup like that can make it even more complicated, so this is still really not something I'd recommend if you're new at self hosting and networking and stuff.

There are lots of cool things you can do so easily with self-hosting, this is absolutely one of the hardest, and while it is rewarding and valuable in its own way, I would say it's far from the most rewarding or valuable thing, and considering the difficulty, it's almost certainly not the first thing you should be attempting.

You mean like a new specification? I think some of the mesh network protocols could be interesting if we can scale them up to billions of devices. I bet there is a way to route a few packets of text to an inbox

I think the last time when you could do that was 25 or 30 years ago. Nowadays, you're just going to enter a world of endless pain, suffering and frustration.

You can do it as an experiment if you want to experience how bad it is. Do it on something isolated that you won't mind setting fire to afterwards.

It's possible, but there are so many catches as to be not practical as a daily use thing. Mine is mostly relegated to system notices and similar uses because I wouldn't rely on it for anything that must get somewhere external.

I'll confirm everything everyone else said. Hosting your own email server is a major pain in the ass for many unrelated reasons. The mail stack is complex. You need to do a whole bunch of things right to avoid your setup from getting flagged as spam. You need to secure it real well. Hosting it at home is likely to be almost impossible because it is very common for residential internet subscriptions to have the required ports blocked, and the ISPs will very often refuse to open them for you even if you have a nice static IP. Getting around that is not gonna be easy.

There's a reason why so many ardent homelabbers refuse to touch email hosting with a 10 foot pole.

You'll have a lot more fun setting up a reticulum or meshtastic node if you're in a busy enough area. Radio and internet based meshnet with chat.

I replied to a similar thread from the lemmy.world selfhost community here: https://lemmy.world/post/24406909/14550114

My reply reviews what concerns you might want to consider before running your own email server.

To address your post specifically: yes. Kind of.

You can purchase a domain from a registrar. You don't really own that though. You have to renew your registration periodically so it's more like renting than owning for those at the "consumer" level. Still, if you register a domain then you can manage its Domain Name Service (DNS) records. Email routing is handled by DNS Mail Transfer (MX) records.

Once you've got a domain name you need to decide if you want to selfhost or purchase email services that let you bring your own domain. Both are doable but bringing your domain to a service provider is likely the better path for you.

Tuta mail and Proton mail are popular providers that let you bring your own domain.

We need to reinvent email. This whole "gmail is the only game in town" thing fucking sucks.

I want a system where I can send and receive files but with an address of my own. And I want to be able to only allow data from a white list without any kind of bypass possibility.

What you're describing is just email.

Yes, you can host an email server.

Maybe what you're asking is if this can be done within a private network, so you wouldn't need to buy a domain and set up dns and all. The answer is again yes, but it wouldn't be much good. Either both servers are on the same LAN, or they each have a static IP that is known and trusted by the other. In both cases there are much better ways to communicate than email.

I have been trying in the past to do this myself but I stopped for the following reasons:

• what happens if your internet connection is lost while someone sends you an email? It probably will not reach your mailbox. If you host it on a private internet connection, it might drop now and then (ISP updates your modem at night, you need to turn off the electricity, etc)
• its complicated.
• mail is crucial for me. It needs to be 100% reliable.

I ended up buying a domain name and hooking it up to a premium email service (fastmail, but there are plenty others).