Like others have commented, I've been running a small email service for several years. The key point here is "small" meaning serving a few users for mainly personal mail. It's a very low volume affair, no "mass mailings", newletters or anything of that kind.
I'm using Exim only because it was the MTA I knew how to configure. It's a simple setup, allows no relays, uses TLS when possible, a few bad actors are RCPT blacklisted, that's about it. I use a webmail program I wrote to retrieve and send mail. It's all quite basic.
Have had very little trouble with spam or or being blocked, which may be a benefit of keeping such a low profile. All in all, I've enjoyed the freedom and privacy of running my own email server. I suspect the secret of success is keeping it small, personal and inconspicuous.
I'm using Exim only because it was the MTA I knew how to configure. It's a simple setup, allows no relays, uses TLS when possible, a few bad actors are RCPT blacklisted, that's about it. I use a webmail program I wrote to retrieve and send mail. It's all quite basic.
Have had very little trouble with spam or or being blocked, which may be a benefit of keeping such a low profile. All in all, I've enjoyed the freedom and privacy of running my own email server. I suspect the secret of success is keeping it small, personal and inconspicuous.