It is now quite a few years since I started running a mail server. Why did I bother? Well two quite different reasons persuaded me.

First there was the obvious issue that I wanted to have more control over where my emails were being stored. Running your own mail server certainly doesn’t make them totally secure, but it does seem a step in the right direction. I was also dubious about people offering me free email services. They may sound like a bargain, but it is always worth considering the adage that with free services you are the product and not the customer. Do you want your email traffic analysed for someone else’s benefit?

The much more practical consideration was that I was running a number of domains, and wanted an email address on each of them. Most of them would have very little traffic, but it is unprofessional not to use email addresses associated with your domains. Having decided against too much reliance on free services, the problem is then that paid for email services normally charge per mailbox. Even if there is very little mail to handle. That means that having a number of lightly used mail boxes becomes quite costly.

Oh, and apart from the sensible reasons, there is the fun of setting up your own mail server, and overcoming the challenges. It’s a quite technical area and it is easy to make mistakes that completely break the server. But I did get one going, and have continued ever since. I always use my preferred server operating system, Debian Linux. And the standard choices for a web server of Postfix and Dovecot.