> The fact that it is a nightmare is a bit of a myth. Granted, not everybody can do it, but that's not necessary.

I agree to some extent. But it is more involved than deploying a Discourse instance in my opinion.

> And then there are many mail providers other than Gmail. It's just that nobody cares and probably the fact that a ton of (most?) people were forced to create a Gmail account by Google.

100% agree. This is the tradeoff I went for. I would love for it to be easier to self host but you can definitely use another provider.