this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2026
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Fair enough - I got it working recently but it was the hardest self-hosting install I've done. No way most people would succeed. Email is 50(?) years of questionable design decisions piled on top of each other so it's become a whole world of weird stuff. Doing email should be it's own tech specialty, like 'devops' or 'db admin' is. There's enough depth to it.
There are a ton of email providers who are not Google, though. e.g. https://proton.me/mail. You don't need to run it on your own hardware.
It literally is, and has been for quite a while :D Enterprise level email admins make a pretty penny eheheh.
I remember working on sendmail back in the day. I had skills then, but mastering sendmail would elevate you to be the guru on the mountain. I struggled to the foothills and managed enough to maintain it, only scratching the surface. There was and is a lot there. The O’reilly sendmail book was the thickest of my collection and I might even still have it.
That book was likely a huge boost to my career. My first tech job was for a very small shop and the owner insisted that everything run Solaris. Which meant sendmail all day long.
That book got me through some rough times. Fucking sendmail milters ... in 2000.
I share your pain!