A couple of years ago I got the bright idea to try and setup my own email server.

This was driven as a cost saving measure — Google or O365 accounts want to charge a monthly, per-account fee. At $6 / month for a single address, this adds up to $72 per year, and involves hacky workarounds as an MSP to provide a service account without accruing extra charges. Plus they are a headache to manage.

I find it to be a fantastic value-add to my clientele as well; after all, professionalism matters, and your business email should come from your website domain which you control, not some phishy gmail address with no barrier to stop impersonation.

However, it has been plagued with problems. Clients complaining about email going to spam, was the big one. So it became little more than a ‘vanity forwarder’ to their email account, which is about as useless as a screen door on a bicycle. In addition, email orchestration (what the heck is an MUA?) is resource intensive and has required a separate server, incurring hosting costs.

I had finally had enough and decided to tackle “The Email Problem” once and for all.

I am glad to say, that this week was productive. I was able to ensure inbox delivery for any of my domains, bridged some technical gaps (you won’t read about dual DKIM signatures anywhere else), find a business solution for my personal life, and even start tinkering with BIMI!

This will allow me to stop paying $6 / month for a Google Workspace domain.

I will be posting more articles as well as documentation related to this. We’re aiming for a weekly update cadence, so please be patient. In the meantime if you need email support, contact us and we’ll be happy to help!