I’m tempted to move to email with my own domain, but don’t really care about the server side of things, I guess I’m following the line that self hosted email is not easy to do, and not sure how reliable I can make my servers.
The other option is to have some other system do the email hosting, and if it is through my domain then there should be no issues with moving around if needed. Hosting all the email archive isn’t really needed either, I’d be fine self hosting or storing the archive.
Is there a set up where some remote service handles email exchange, and you just sync with it eg through POP style interfaces? Id actually prefer if my own server was doing the sync rather than a desktop running Thunderbird etc, that way it is kind of self hosted but also robust to down time. What’s the best practice along these lines?


You can have a hosted e-mail system with your own domain, many service providers will do this. They would have the storage, archive, etc. on their servers. Access would be a web client, e-mail client of your choice, or a bridge demon. Option 2 is a hosted vertual server, so your self hosting but renting a VM server on a providers data center, they take care of the hardware, power, backup (sometimes depending on service), etc. You would set up your OS and e-mail services.
I use a combo of this, I have a service with my own domain and point my MX records there, I use a bridge and a sctipt to pull backups and store them locally but use their email clients for mobile and Thunderbird on PCs.
Edit: FWIW I’ve been using Proton (paid version) for this but will be moving to hosted virtual server at some point, when I get a minute to migrate. I expect the cost to be about the same