I give up.
I tried left and right to try to install an email server so I could degoogle my life.
But therechnical barrier is thick and Google keeps adding more to it. Forget it. I can’t even get thru the installation process much less trying to get my shit off Google.
I figure, I don’t actually have any need for my email addresses. Just like my phone number. I never call anyone. I’m going to discourage my kids from using email at all. I’ll remind everyone I know that I don’t use email at every opportunity I get just like I remind people to not call me and that my phone number is not available.
Between spammers and Google, I just don’t need this headache in my life. My mom is much less technically savvy than the average pet. So Google will just siphon her data and when the megabits are full then you just delete the old stuff.
You don’t need it. No one will spend their life reading your emails when you’re gone or watching your videos or listening to your recordings or viewing your photos. There’s no need to worry about just deleting the pile of shit you’ve accumulated. I’m this done.
Yes selfhosting it is awesome but it’s definitely not the simplest service to do host.
I think what OP means is that you can mix using an external email provider with storing your own email archive + an IMAP server + a webmail app. You can let the provider deal with the IP reputation and all that pain and just use their SMTP and IMAP to send email and pull to your local server, respectively. If you use your own domain you can also switch the provider in 10 minutes by simply changing your DNS records and retain the same address.
The hard part for me when giving up Gmail wasn’t the stuff above, it was tracking down all the places I was subscribed as @gmail.com and replacing it with @my.domain addresses. That took about 6 months. The local pull + IMAP + webmail took a weekend to set up.