[Kadin]

Most ISPs don't allow inbound (or, often, outbound) connections on port 25, so the number of people who can run mail servers at home is pretty limited. I think even Cox stopped allowing it a while ago, and they were among the most lenient of the big ISPs. (Comcast hasn't allowed it for a while.)

That, I think, is why the distribution managers don't make the default configurations a little more friendly/sane; most users aren't interested in installing a MTA to do anything but local delivery or smarthosting, and the people who are, are probably going to tweak the configs to death anyway, so it's not worth spending the time making it run well and securely straight out of the box.

It wouldn't be too hard to build a "mailserver in a box" with (say) Debian + Postfix + LetsEncrypt + BIND that you could stand up in an hour and be reasonably secure (and I'd be kinda surprised if that doesn't exist in some form already), but I don't know how many people would want it who aren't running mailservers already, and have the capability of doing so.

[dheera]

So run it on AWS. In general, I think running mail servers off a residential, or even business ISP is very sketchy. E-mail is my primary line of communication for important matters, and I can't afford to have a snowstorm, busted hard drive, orange juice spill, or basement flood take out my mail sever.

[icebraining]

I don't think it's "sketchy" to have different requirements. For my personal needs, email is definitively important, but it doesn't need HA, and its store-and-forward architecture means it copes fine with an hour or six of downtime (serves usually retry for several days until giving up).

[amichal]

Ec2 blocks/throttles outgoing smtp

[_cudgel]

EC2 blocks/throttles outgoing SMTP by default.

As with so many things in AWS, it's left up to the customer to inform AWS that a) you're running a mail server, b) what the purpose/use case is and c) request they configure the reverse lookup associated with the elastic IP you've allocated.

Source: I've been running public facing SMTP servers in EC2 for years with no issues.

[brongondwana]

AWS also has an outbound SMTP service you can use:

https://aws.amazon.com/ses/faqs/

Still, unless you're running a server for a lot of people and you have tons of free time, you'll discover that it's more expensive than paying any of a bunch of people to take care of email for you.

Source: I work at FastMail

[_cudgel]

You're absolutely correct. The cost of my AWS deployment in service of my personal email, and less than 5 other people comes in at ~$5.06/mo. The time, however, is the real cost. If/when I gain significant users, Fastmail would be at the top of my list of companies to consider.