Just letting you know, running your own email server is very difficult. Setting it up is easy enough, but getting port 25 unblocked by your ISP and getting your IP off all the blocklists is a pain. You also need a static IP. Then some of the big players will still deliver your mail to the spam folder because you don’t send enough email to create a “reputation”.

I just recently launched an email service called https://port87.com, so I had to learn all of this the hard way. It’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult.

Somebody else mentioned it, but I want to second yunohost. That’s where I started years ago, and remain today. I run it on a box at home, and it has Nextcloud, Navidrome and a couple other things installed on it. About as easy as it gets.

For media server (Jellyfin, etc), I have tried several solutions and ended up with swizzin community edition. The hardest part was setting up the VPN to integrate with the torrent client, so I don’t get booted off the Hetzner host. Note that you could also set this up at home.

As you can see by the replies, lots of people want to help you, but very few want to set this stuff up for pay. If you really want to go that route, check out sites like fiverr or upwork.

For file syncing, I would highly recommend owncloud over next cloud for self setup. I’ve tried next in a few instances and they are much more feature rich but not nearly as reliable in my experience and requires more maintenance. Owncloud is simple maybe even too simple for you, but sync features for me work out of the box. For computers just download the app. Point it to your server and you’re good. For mobile there’s an app for it though it is more limited than the desktop app/next cloud. You can look at videos too and make your own decision but that’s my 2 cents. I currently run it off proxmox.

For docs, I’ve also run into issues with Joplin and haven’t moved from onenote yet. I tried orgmode but again that requires another technology stack with either git or synching and emacs. The best solution I’ve used so far is obsidian (idk if it’s FOSS) with synching but it’s all markdown so not easy to just edit unless you learn markdown.

Truly I feel your pain. I work a full time job as a carrier network engineer, and currently working on my CCNP while taking a term break from night school. Time is precious, and unless I’m learning something that is going to make me more well rounded as an engineer or that I am flat out interested in I want to minimize it as much as possible. I would not put troubleshooting the peculiarities of Next Cloud in that category haha, but maybe you do.

If you are willing to troubleshoot it by discussing with me on DM or discord or something. I am more than happy to chat with you for free.

I can help you with anything you want to self-host apart from email. Send me an inbox with a list of the softwares and how your setup looks like.

Thanks everybody for the feedback!

I did purchase a cloud plan from joplin directly, and it worked with all my devices instantly, no fuss.

Linode had advertised a “one-click” solution to get NextCloud up and running, but it was far from it. A couple folks linked a GitHub page with a list of NextCloud providers and I decided on Cloudamo, and that was way more up my alley then Linode. No ssh, no console, no installs, just easy GUI. I am just waiting on the nameserver change and then hopefully I am good to go there.

It sounds like hosting my own email is not a good idea. I already have a proton account that I am using for email. I tried using it for File storage, but it has been lacking, and others have been unable to view or download what I share with them. Does anyone have an opinion on if Skiff is better enough to switch over? Could Skiff pages replace Joplin? Someone mentioned lack of security with NextCloud. Would you recommend Skiff Drive over it?

I had never heard of mailbox.org before. Why might you recommend it over the others?

I will DM some of you for some advice on my local setup.