Zach Bloomquist Avatar

Zach Bloomquist

Zach Bloomquist zach.bloomqu.ist

Reliable, deliverable, self-hosted email

This sounds too good to be true, because it kind of is. There is no escaping the cloud (because of email trust) or the requirement of sysadmin’ing this setup (sending/receiving email is critical). If you slack on the details or upkeep, it’s your email.

I have been on an ongoing quest to free myself from cloud services for years now. During this time, I have hosted my personal email (@bloomqu.ist) on a Google Apps G Suite Google Workspace account, which, while convenient, also means that my personal emails are at the whims of one of the world’s most privacy-hostile companies.

Don’t get me wrong – what Zach shared is quite possible, but it’s still too time consuming and difficult to host your own email. It’s untenable long-term. There’s a billion dollar business there waiting for someone to seriously compete with Google on email, and not be evil. Fastmail comes to mind. I could be wrong, but I would characterize them as being an alternative, not seriously competing with Google.

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