Some thoughts on hosting email

Generally speaking, email isn't as hard as its reputation would suggest. Yes, big-tech providers will occasionally send my messages to spam... but paying for commercial email doesn't guarantee delivery: emails within a single provider are generally safe, but in my experience, big-tech to other big-tech has a ~75% chance. Because of this, having my own mail server is great for piece of mind: I can be sure that anyone can send me an email without it mysteriously vanishing. My reply might go to spam, but at that point we're already in communication and can sort it out. A softer version of self hosting is to keep a big-tech account, but only use it for initiating conversations. Point the "reply-to" header at a server you run, and give that address when people ask for contact details. Since replies to real emails never go to spam, this provides the best of both worlds: maximizing the chance that someone else will get your message, while also maximizing the chance that you will get theirs.…