Mail is freaking hard. It’s not the setup that’s the issue. It’s getting enough reputation that your emails don’t get bounced into oblivion.

Believe me, I have tried.

You run into things like registering your netblock with Microsoft so it can accept your emails. You don’t own a netblock? Didn’t think so. Do you have enough outgoing emails so your IP builds up reputation as a reliable sender, so you don’t get thrown into spam by Google? Didnt think so either. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

What I ended up doing is use one of the big providers (be it Google, Microsoft, Tuta, Proton or something else) and just pull the email to my server. Sending out works the same. Basically using them as proxy.

I still get to keep my email and I’m I independent from the whims of my email provider. The tradeoff being I need to shell out a few bucks per month and email still passes their servers.

Haven’t found a better solution yet, unfortunately.

Duh. Same goes for Steam games and most of digital content.

If you want to keep it, there’s usually always an option to sail the high seas.