Thoms

mailcow lists a small german vps hoster with a fair price and the right sizing. It’s not a big hoster, gmail and microsoft are not blocking the ip-range and the ASN is not listed on any blacklist.

The support is quick and helpful, rDNS was a matter of minutes to set up. You don’t need any deeper knowlegde of docker, since it is a one-time job to set the things up und get the stack running. The documentation of mailcow is very good.

You can run it from home, but you will need a forward host like sendgrid and maybe a backup mx. You can set a primary ip and a backup ip wich will get all the mails when the primary host is down. I guess, there a comercial or free backup-mx services out there. No problem. If you have a static ip for your homelab or at least a dynamic dns-name, it will work. Recieving is easy. But you will need a good forward-service for sending.

Just take a look at https://docs.mailcow.email/

This runs from a small box with everything included. It gives you all the tools and config needed for running a secure and feature rich email service. Webmail, some sort of exchange emulation, webcalender on top of a solid postfix/dovecot install with rspamd as spam filter. Everything is configurable via a nice web UI.

After 15y running my own mail service and editing a lot of config files, I use this piece of free and open software and find it very good. All you need is a box somewhere in the internet. Running from a homelab will instantly fail, expect you have a static ip.