If you’re running an email server for more than a handful of persistent users, I’d probably agree. However, there are self-host solutions that do a decent job of being ‘all-in-one’ (MailU, Mailcow, Docker-Mailserver) that can help perform a lot of input filtering.
If your small org just needs automation emails (summaries, password resets), it’s definitely feasible to do actually, as long as you have port 25 available in addition to 465, 587 and you can assign PTR records on reverse DNS. Optionally you should use a common TLD for your domain as it will be less likely to be flagged via SpamAssassin. MXToolbox and Mail-Tester together offer free services to help test the reliability of your email functionality.
maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 3 weeks ago
Our small mail server is doing OK. Incoming spam is an issue but not a massive problem. Outgoing spam doesn’t exist. Once a year the IP ends up on the Microsoft blocklist but using the desirability form to submit mitigation requests is easy enough and takes half a day or so to sort out.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the Thunderbird team does with Stalwart.
That reminds me I’ve been meaning to spin up a server and install Stalwart and test it out.