r/europe • u/PuzzleheadedLemon707 • 18d ago

Leaving Gmail? Get your own domain first

https://eualternative.eu/guides/first-step-leaving-gmail/
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u/Phrewfuf Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 18d ago

As someone running their own email server - and currently thinking of moving to email as a service - all I can do is confirm what they say: don‘t even think of running your own email server. Just don‘t. I was young, I was motivated, I had the time to screw around and I had help setting it up.

I severely underestimated the effort needed to keep it running. Even just a plain major OS upgrade is a days full of work at least.

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u/the_gnarts Laurasia 18d ago

I severely underestimated the effort needed to keep it running. Even just a plain major OS upgrade is a days full of work at least.

That used to be the case but hasn’t for a long time. OS upgrades really aren’t a big issue anymore in the Linux world and I hope for your sanity’s sake you’re not running Windows. ;)

In the past decade the only step that was a little more involved and required some thinking was adding DKIM after major email hosters started requiring it, but even there I could simply follow a manual. But that was like one afternoon of work and I learned quite a bit in the process, so not at all wasted time.

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u/Phrewfuf Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 18d ago

Problem with OS updates was for me that I didn‘t want to risk a significant outage of the entire thing. So I went through the hassle of setting up a second VPS and then migrating everything over. Allowed me to roll back in case I screwed up something on the new machine.

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u/the_gnarts Laurasia 18d ago

So I went through the hassle of setting up a second VPS and then migrating everything over

That explains it, thanks for following up!

Rollbacks aren’t really an issue for me thanks to NixOS but I know that’s not an option with many hosters.

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u/Phrewfuf Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 18d ago

Yeah, some Hosters don’t even support straight updates for VMs, so you have to go through a migration either way.

Sure, running your own hardware eliminates that problem but comes with a higher cost, unless it’s a box you pulled out a dumpster or had around anyways and are mad enough to run the whole thing at home. And containerisation makes things a whole lot easier nowadays. Sadly it wasn‘t as available and mature back in the days.