Email Setup: Part 4 — Self-Hosted Server or Paid Email: How to Choose

You can get email on your domain in three ways: forwarding via Cloudflare (part 1), with a mail provider (part 2) or on your own Mailcow server (part 3). This part is about choosing between the last two: paying a service or running your own server.

What a Russian company can use in 2026

The choices have narrowed, and that’s the first thing to consider.

• Foreign services — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Proton, Fastmail, Zoho — cannot be paid with a Russian card: Visa and Mastercard have not worked in Russia since March 2022, and Microsoft suspended sales then as well. In addition, if correspondence contains customers’ personal data, since July 1, 2025 its primary collection must be stored in databases located in Russia (part 5 of article 18 of Federal Law No. 152-FZ).
• Yandex 360 for Business — only paid plans: the free “Mail for domain” was closed in 2023. The claim that Yandex allows up to 1000 free mailboxes on your domain is outdated.
• VK WorkSpace (formerly Mail.ru corporate mail) — paid plans and a free “With ads” plan for teams up to five people; every outgoing message on it automatically adds a signature with the VK WorkSpace brand.
• Mail at the registrar or hosting provider — basic mailboxes without an office suite, usually cheaper than corporate services.
• Own server on a VPS with a Russian provider.

Details of Yandex 360 and VK WorkSpace plans — in part 2.

What a paid service gives you

• Deliverability out of the box. A large provider has good reputations for sending addresses, and it suggests SPF and DKIM records itself (how to check them — in the part about SPF, DKIM and DMARC of the DNS series).
• Protection from spam and viruses, server redundancy and mail storage are handled by the provider.
• Office suite: calendars, drive, video calls, messenger.
• Predictable cost: the price is multiplied by the number of users.

Cons: cost grows with headcount, the provider may change terms, and if an account is blocked you lose access to mail entirely. Fine-grained configuration options are limited.

What running your own server gives you

• Full control: mail is stored on your server, filtering, forwarding and retention rules are set by you.
• No per-mailbox fee: a hundred mailboxes cost the same as ten, as long as server resources suffice.
• Compliance with 152-FZ, if the server is located in Russia.

The downsides are more serious than they seem:

• You have to earn deliverability. Correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, a reverse DNS record (PTR) for the server IP, and a clean IP reputation are required. A new IP often lands in spam at major mail services until it builds up history.
• Port 25. Many VPS providers block outbound connections on port 25 by default; without their permission the server cannot send mail directly.
• Resources. According to official Mailcow documentation, at least 6 GB of RAM and 1 GB of swap are required — this is no longer the cheapest VPS.
• Ongoing maintenance: updates, queue monitoring, blacklist checks, mail backups.
• Responsibility for downtime. If the server is unavailable, mail accumulates temporarily at senders, but long downtime means loss of incoming mail.

What an own server really costs

Example calculation for a Mailcow server in September 2026:

• VPS: Mailcow won’t fit into 4 GB of memory, you need a server with 8 GB — in Timeweb Cloud the Cloud-80 plan (4 vCPU, 8 GB, 80 GB disk) costs 1 800 ₽ per month when paid annually;
• backups in object storage — a few hundred rubles more per month depending on volume;
• administrator time: initial setup — one to two working days, then a few hours per month for updates and deliverability checks.

The server itself costs about as much as several paid mailboxes. The main expense is specialist time. Therefore an own server is economically justified with a large number of mailboxes or when an administrator is already on staff.

Hybrid setup

A common compromise: inbound storage and archiving on your own server, while bulk or important outbound mail is sent via an external SMTP relay with a good reputation. Then the SPF includes that service’s domain, and a DKIM key is published for its selector. This solves the main deliverability problem but adds another provider and their fees.

How to choose

Common mistakes

• Choosing by server price without accounting for time. A cheap VPS doesn’t make mail cheap if hours are spent each month fighting spam filters.
• Running your own server without PTR and DMARC. Mail is sent but not delivered — it goes to spam or is rejected.
• Sending mass mail from a corporate mailbox. Bulk sending damages the domain’s reputation and can lead to account blocking by the provider.
• No mail backup. Whether with a service or on your own server, a mistakenly deleted mailbox without a backup cannot be recovered.
• Relying on outdated advice. Yandex no longer has free mail for domains, and foreign services cannot be paid from Russia.