RIP Skiff email - You were too good to be true after all

And so it goes- the mail service which was "too good to be true" was in fact, exactly that. They say if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, than it's a duck. Skiff looked like an insane value compared to the competition, and with supposedly no catch (well, other than no support for say, SMTP)... And it seems like there was a good reason for it.

Sure enough, those red flags would come to a head 10 days ago, when the Skiff team announced they would be shutting down their services later this year due to being acquired by Notion.

I'm not someone who is into conspiracy theories, but it seems like the company was positioned for a buy-out from the very start. They made a fantastic product at an unreasonable price, got lots of recognition, grew their user base, and boosted their numbers so they would look like an excellent value for someone like Notion.

So what now? We already established that Protonmail is a non-starter for various reasons. While they offer a decent solution, paying per-user account for someone with a custom domain is completely unacceptable. Absolutely infuriating that this is what having your own domain and wanting email has become. Since nobody can offer me an affordable solution, it's time to re-evaluate...

Self-hosting email

It's time. I didn't think I'd be here this soon, but without a choice, I must now tackle something I've only ever done in the corporate world. Having my own mail server wasn't something I thought I would have to do. Many people have told tales of how it's not a good idea, but I'm at the point where I think I have a strong enough understanding of the situation to where I can make it work.

With the help of something called Mailu I think I can do it. Via a docker stack, it includes everything I should need to have a mail server. I've tried to deploy it in the past with no success, but now that I have to deploy it out of necessity, I'll give it another go with more effort this time.

Hopefully my next post will be about my great success self-hosting email. In the meantime, RIP Skiff. They say the flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and that's exactly what happened here.