Requirements:
- free
- will not delete my account due to inactivity
- privacy focused (doesn’t have to be crazy private, just decent)
- doesn’t require my phone number
- doesn’t require an invitation (like riseup mail)
Additionally it would be cool if it allowed me to have few email addresses in 1 account (skiff lets you have 4 addresses you can send emails from, but they are shutting down their service).
Sounds like your best bet is to self host an email service
Yup.
Buy any domain name, doesn’t matter what. I pay 15 dollars a year for mine. https://gandi.net
https://mailu.io/2.0/ is pretty turnkey
https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver has a lot more customizability and you can chain together stuff like encryption, spam filtering, auto replies with an AI agent. However those are all other containers you’ll have to add into your environment.
https://jzweig.com/blog/setup-your-own-email-server-with-docker/ Is a really simple how to
Whatever you do, pay close attention to your SPF, DKIM and DMARC
https://www.howtogeek.com/devops/dkim-dmarc-and-spf-setting-up-email-security/
Edit: OP asked for free, secure, and doesn’t get taken down for inactivity. If you want to do that and pay as little as possible, with the most security, you’ll have to self host. Otherwise you should pay for the service, or deal with the data brokers that offer free email. In capitalism, unfortunately, there is no free lunch.
Suggested to OP and others that self-hosting email is easy and reliable is a bad idea in my opinion.
Instead I suggest the OP to let go of the “free” requirement. There are at least three email providers that provide email for 1 Euro a month including a few email aliases. Another option is to find a web hosting company that also provides email with web hosting. For example Gandi used to do that though I read they made some changes with their hosting options.
I could not agree more. Self hosting is fairly easy for pretty much any need, once you get the hang of it. But self hosting email servers is inherently hard and requires too much maintenance. I tried, did, and then dropped. It’s a real pain in the ass.
If checking their email a couple of times per year is too high a requirement, I would not recommend the time and effort necessary to maintain a mail server. Even people who enjoy self-hosting often do not want to host a mail server.
Upvoted