I have read for years that it is just not worth it to host your own email. I have understood this. I have believed this.

Recent changes in Google's policy have me considering moving away Gmail and even Google Workspace. I already only use it for the email feature - I use Immich, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, etc. I use a combination of self hosted in the home and on self managed cloud servers (can't really have Uptime Kuma on the home network to tell me if the home network based services go down, for example).

I researched other email providers. I didn't like what I saw or the prices you would get per user.

So I decided I would just try and see if I could make it work to host it myself. I found Stalwart and got that going on a cloud server. It has a setting to link right into the Cloudflare API and add all the records it needed. It was way easier than I expected. The IP I got for the server was clean on spamhaus and everywhere I checked. Once I got everything set up, I sent some emails to test. They all arrived. They passed SPF,DKIM,DMARC. Stalwart has cardDAV/calDAV. Scored 10/10 on mail-tester. Shows up even to my Outlook inbox for my work email (now that was filtered to spam but so is everything that isn't whitelisted by IT).

Everything is hardened and access is locked down behind cloudflare. I have bichon running to back up everything from Gmail/Workspace now. I did this all on a separate subdomain for testing.

Am I an idiot? What am I missing that is going to blindside me on this? Is the other shoe going to drop? Why should I not just full send it and move over to my shiny new selfhosted email provider?

Talk me down off this cliff here because I am already in my swimsuit and the water down there looks inviting.