I should probably tighten up that line. What I really meant to say is that the average self-hoster who just wants to enable a few services to send email doesn't want to run a mail server. Different audiences, different (and both correct) answers.
I set out to solve some pretty specific problems of my own but I'm genuinely curious how others have tackled these things. Posthorn and Postal don't compete in my head. Postal makes you into your own provider, which is something I personally deeply want to avoid. Posthorn assumes you've already picked a provider (which might be Postal, actually, it would work just fine pointed at a self-hosted Postal instance).
Maybe I'm confused, maybe the label "self-hoster" is broader than the definition in my mind, but that's exactly what self-hosters want to do, that's why we call ourselves self-hosters, we want to host the stuff we use ourselves :)
If I just wanted to "enable a few services" I'd use AWS or whatever the modern alternatives are.
That said, none of it has to do with my own personal email, which has been on Gmail for long enough to drink, so we are probably talking about two different situations.
Seems to me like there a broad spectrum of "self-hosters", ranging from "I run everything on my hardware in my home" to "I deploy FOSS SaaS software to AWS for us to run", probably neither of these are more/less "self-hosting" than the other.
But then you'd be using AWS for those services too.
I think there's a meaningful gap between folks who are willing and able to self host their own applications but have decided that running their own MTA is a separate and much harder commitment. Different line, but still self-hosting in any reasonable read of the term. I've been on both sides of that line at one point, I'm trying to avoid going back. :)
Yes, so obviously as a self-hoster, that's a no-go. Hence not wanting "to enable a few services", it'd go directly counter to the initial objectives.
But yeah, I hear and agree that there is a spectrum here, self-hosting some parts while relying on others can be a good balance, especially if you have other requirements to consider, like time or resource investments, it's not a black & white decision you should make without careful considerations.
Only a sith self-hosters want to self-host absolutely everything.
https://github.com/postalserver/postal/blob/8ef89606bc34146f...
https://rubyonrails.org/maintenance
Not great, but better than 6.x.
We do, and thats why we use Postal [1].
The more SaaS applications that self-host email the better. It forces the big guys, ie Microsoft, to improve their blocklists and not lazily block entire ranges. Yes its work contacting them occasionally, but it keeps the internet open. The alternative is an internet where they control it all.
1. https://docs.postalserver.io/