← ServerPilot Docs

Risks of Hosting Your Own Mail

ServerPilot installs and configures Postfix so your scripts can send email from your server. However, ServerPilot does not manage mail servers for hosting your domain's email. Though it's possible to customize your server to run a mail server, it's risky and extremely difficult to host your domain's email in a reliable manner on your own server.

Reasons to use an external mail service to host your domain's email include:

1. Mail services (such as SendGrid, MailChimp, and more) have agreements in place with email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, et cetera) so they are almost never rate-limited or blocked outright, and are far less likely to be marked as spam.
2. Running an email server can be a very time-consuming task, from removing IPs from blocked lists, to helping deliverability via rDNS, SPF, and DKIM records, to handling disk space requirements, and much more.
3. The small expense of a mail service is typically worth the time and frustration saved.
4. We cannot offer any technical assistance at all for hosting email; if email troubles arise, we could not provide help.

Rather than hosting your own email, please see our guide to hosting email for alternative options.