A Synology is actually not that bad of an idea…
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I mean. You could host email on a pi with an SSD and have resources to spare.
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I probably could… though I like the thought of also having a NAS.
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Just throwing out options for ya!
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Thats why I made the topic so I do appreciate it it… Don’t get me wrong 
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So my current setup is a nuc files ever and 4x pi 4s as a kubernetes cluster for most services, except the ones that need x86.
So… You can have both.
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So now instead of just creating an account with some service provider and perhaps being done in an hour you’re considering buying a NAS, a few drives at probably inflated prices, and perhaps some network shenanigans as well in order to set everything up. I know this path and have walked it many times.
My work here is done.
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My favorite kind. 
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email is fundamentally insecure. Federated and decentralized, but inherently insecure as it was never designed for security.
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I have a hot take that many here may not like.
Personally, I found that Microsoft 365, specifically the commercial version, and even more specifically the Exhange Online Plan # 1 with a dash of Business Essentials was the right fit for me.
$4/user/mo (user, not email address or shared mailbox)
I have $12/mo for email for myself, my wife, and my dad and was able to really crank the incoming email spam/phish/malware filters down tight
Maybe one sketchy email a month gets through.
No more of the “click here to renew your Netflix subscription” garbage.
They have email with MFA the just works all the time, no hassle and no fuss.
been some of the best $12/mo that I happily spend.
Well, actually, I do $5/mo for me because I want that 1TB of cloud storage, so $13/mo.
Could I roll my own? Sure, Could I find something cheaper, also yes, but for the money, and the configurability that I have, super worth it IMO.
Also, nice to make throw away email mailboxes for random things which is nice and doesn’t cost any extra.
Want to tinker with a non-prod domain and an on-prem email server, go for it.
Personally, I want it to work and not have to explain to my family members that I was playing around and broke the email server again, and hopefully I’ll have it fixed soonish.
Highly recommend for those that want to set it and forget it.
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One suggestion that occurs to me if you are going to pay for hosting… get your own domain from a separate service. It gives you leverage to shop around without disrupting everything tied to your email.
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I like Posteo. 1€ a month and I sync my calendar and contacts to Thunderbird and to my phone via DavX.
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I’ve recently started hosting my own mail in 365; I’ve previously self-hosted on and off over the past couple of decades before outsourcing it to 365.
Why?
- I need a test/play tenant for 365 so I can break shit without doing it in work’s tenant.
- it’s not too expensive ($9/month) and I can run office apps if needed (I pay someone else for domain services separately)
- it will work without my home internet being up
- I can also spin up VMs, etc. if I need/want without needing to worry about home storage/connectivity/etc.
- MS cloud spam filtering is better than I’m likely to be able to do myself on Prem, and certainly having mail filtered upstream before it hits my home internet is a win.
Replace 365 with AWS if you prefer.
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My experiences as someone who switched to encrypted mail:
— Tutanota search function sucks, but it’s otherwise a great service
— ProtonMail is expensive
— I don’t need to send encrypted mail to hardly anyone.
— Encryption isn’t the only way to achieve privacy.
I’ve ended up self-hosting my Mail in a VPS using Mailcow-dockerized. I can host as many email accounts and domains as I like for free, and I back it up to another VPS I have, though you could easily do that to your desktop.
To avoid tracking, I run two domains. One I use for any random stuff, and one is my real email I care about.
It also allows me to run catch-all inboxes, admin inboxes, no reply accounts etc etc. Configurability is off the charts, it comes prepackaged with a webmail client that if you don’t like it, you don’t need to use.
It’s free, reliable, stable. The only thing you need to get your head around is that you won’t miss/lose email. 1) Your VPs host should have good uptime 2) it’s easy to setup alerts for health checks 3) Mails servers try to send emails for days before giving up.
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That is an excellent suggestion. I never thought of M365 as an email service, but you get a lot for cheap; email, offline backup, and apps. If you don’t need desktop apps then the basic business service is even (slightly) cheaper than the personal service.
Nice. 
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ProtonMail glows, Tutanota glows. They’re both privacy focused, but I wouldn’t trust them any more than Google, Yahoo, Yandex or Microsoft. They claim they don’t scan mails though. They don’t serve ads, so they have no reason to, other than bioluminescence.
You can only trust yourself and services that are secure by design (which email is not). But self-hosting can be a PITA if you don’t know what you’re doing, so yeah, ProtonMail and Tutanota are far superior to free mail services sponsored by advertisements and data collection.
Also, do keep in mind that the content of the mails is not scaned, only the metadata, even for big tech, like time of sent, time when it was read, sender / receiver, source IP / domain and such. TLAs don’t need the content of the emails, LEO arrest people based on metadata, which is correlated from different sources.
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Seems like a great idea. What kind of resources are you running it on? Just a 1GB VM or do you need more?
they are a decent mail provider
https://bluetie.com/products/business/email/bluetie-email/
another alternative