You can be locked out of a paid service just as easily, with just as little support, and with no recourse.

If my vps host blows up then I will start up a vps on another host, run the install script, import my backups and move the domain name. About 15 minutes work to resolved an issue that will probably never happen.

Get a domain and host it somewhere.

Why is this "Just move off the grid and live off the land" response so popular on HN?

Some people like independence more than others. Although it can be impractical in some cases, I do appreciate people who try to live "off the grid" in an age where we are born plugged in.

Well

“just use an existing service / do what everyone else is doing”

probably isn’t very representative of the entrepreneurial / hacker spirit.

Not to mention your self-hosted BS will be considered spam by nearly every major provider

Not if you set your DKIM/SPF/DMARC/etc. correctly.

If you can't be bothered, just use a provider who will set it for you... like Google.

The big problem with email lock-in is that when you switch providers, you can't take your old address with you. Best case, you can set up forwarding. Worst case, if your account just gets deleted, or the provider goes out of business, everyone who only knows your old address cannot contact you anymore.

This, in turn, means that even when considering non-free email service providers, you need some reassurance that provider will be around and will not institute crazy policies in the future. Which favors large providers like Google over smaller ones, and reinforces the lock-in.

You register your own domain. Usually that comes with free email accounts. If the provider goes down then you still control the domain so that you can move to a new provider.

Fastmail has been around for almost 20 years and I've been using them for more than 10.

I use this with an rpi running offline imap read-only.

Transitions aren't really too difficult so long as proper steps are taken:

- Notify your contacts of your address change.

- Set your old address to forward to your new address and always reply to emails from your new one.

- After 2 months, set your old email to auto-reply to all messages saying that you have changed your address and the old one will soon be deactivated.

- Finally, turn deactivate the old email.

It's work, but I've done it on multiple occasions. I wonder if there could be a service that could automate the entire process, since it could all be done via IMAP.

It doesn't work if you suddenly lost your access without prior notice.

I have documented a few cases of such unnoticed termination in my blog post:

https://paradite.com/2016/02/18/stay-independent-problems-wi...