there are ways to make it easier; it’s been gamified:

https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete

Available on FDROID.

When my partner stops to play pokemon go, I complete some Open Street Map info quests…

+1 for Thunderbird for Windows, OSX and Linux…

Yeah. I’m grandfathered in on a $90/yr plan for inbound which is workable.

DuoCircle but I’ve just checked and the service I pay $90/year for is now $50/month, which is bananas for my low email volumes.

I aplaud the write up and recognise that the OP has developed a solution that suits their use case.

Personally I started running my own mail around the same time, but host for several family members at the same time.

I went a slightly different route and pay for a mail filtering service for inbound filtering and outbound relay. All up costs me $90USD per year for inbound and $4 a month for outbound

This has solved most blacklist and outbound mail server reputation issues.

I used to run zarafa till they went commercial. I’ve since migrated to Mailinabox as a platform. Its pretty resilient. (I’ve just disabled greylisying and spam detection as I’ve got upstream MX filtering already) I’ve also recently been through a MiaB major upgrade - it was pretty simple once I actually read the instructions properly!

First macbook air was ethereal, nas was bitbucket, first macbook pros deathstar then dreadnaught, second bigger nas was abyss…

More recently I’ve been using Neal Stevenson characters and themes.

Mobile wass “primer”, high spec laptop was “reason”, workhorse laptop was “chevaline”…

Work servers I’ve always liked two themes:

Chaos or medications:

Anarchy, bedlam, disturbed, chaos, mayhem, futility, entropy, maelstrom,

Sudafed, NyQuil, Tylenol, advil, codeine, morphine, panadol, Valium,

Self host with mail-in-a-box

https://mailinabox.email/