Self‑Hosted Email vs Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

Choosing where to host your business email is no longer a simple “free vs paid” question. For most teams we talk to at dchost.com, the real decision is between running self‑hosted email on your own server or using Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Each path has very different implications for cost, security, deliverability and day‑to‑day operations. The wrong choice can leave you overpaying for licenses you do not fully use, or struggling with spam filters and IP blocklists on a server you are not fully prepared to manage. In this article, we will walk through these trade‑offs from a practical, hosting‑side perspective: what you actually need to run email yourself, what the big suites really give you for the money, and when hybrid setups make sense. By the end, you should be able to map your own requirements to a clear path: fully self‑hosted, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or a combination that fits your budget and risk profile.

What “Self‑Hosted Email” Really Means

Defining self‑hosted email in practical terms

Self‑hosting email means you are responsible for the full mail stack that sends, receives and stores your messages. That stack usually includes:

• MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) such as Postfix or Exim for SMTP sending and receiving
• IMAP/POP server such as Dovecot for mailbox access
• Webmail (Roundcube, RainLoop, etc.) if you want browser access
• Spam and virus filtering (rspamd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV)
• DNS records (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, PTR) correctly configured for your domain

This stack can live on a shared hosting account, VPS, dedicated server or colocated server at dchost.com. On shared hosting, much of the stack is preconfigured by us; on VPS/dedicated/colocation, you or your sysadmin have full control.

If you want a deeper technical dive into building and tuning such a stack yourself, our article I built my own mail server with Postfix, Dovecot and rspamd walks through real‑world configuration details.

Infrastructure options for self‑hosting

With dchost.com you can run self‑hosted email on:

• Shared hosting: easiest starting point; mail server, spam filtering and webmail are already in place. You manage mailboxes and DNS records.
• VPS: more control, dedicated resources, custom configuration. Ideal for agencies and businesses with dozens of domains or specific policies.
• Dedicated servers or colocation: for large organizations, ISPs or SaaS providers who need maximum control, custom storage, and strict compliance.

Choosing between shared hosting, VPS and dedicated depends on scale and workload. If you are unsure how much CPU/RAM you really need, our guide how many vCPUs and how much RAM you really need gives a useful methodology you can also apply to mail workloads.

Cost Comparison: Self‑Hosted vs Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

How SaaS email pricing actually scales

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 use per‑user, per‑month pricing. At first glance, this looks simple and predictable: a fixed amount per mailbox, including storage, webmail, mobile sync and collaboration tools. Where it becomes tricky is growth and role‑based usage:

• Each additional employee, shared mailbox or alias that needs its own login usually means another license.
• Some staff (warehousing, production, part‑time roles) may not need a full office suite, but still require reliable email.
• Multiple domains for brands or projects often lead to configuration overhead or more licenses for shared mailboxes.

For a 5‑person team, this is often affordable and attractive. For 50+ accounts, the monthly bill can quickly outgrow your hosting budget for websites, databases and email combined.

Self‑hosted email cost structure

Self‑hosting cost is dominated by infrastructure + administration time, not per‑address fees:

• Server cost: a shared hosting plan or a small VPS at dchost.com can host dozens of mailboxes for a predictable monthly price.
• Storage: your cost scales with disk space, not users. 10 accounts using 1 GB each and 100 accounts using 1 GB each are not that different if the total disk usage is the same.
• Licensing: most mail components are open source. You might invest in a commercial spam filter or backup tool, but not per‑mailbox office licenses.
• Admin time: you (or your IT partner) must maintain updates, monitoring, DNS and security.

This model shines when you have many low‑usage accounts (e.g. departments, aliases, project addresses) and do not want to pay a full SaaS license for each one. It also fits agencies who manage email for many client domains on the same infrastructure.

Hidden and indirect costs

Any realistic comparison has to include hidden costs that do not appear on invoices:

• Management overhead: with self‑hosting, you pay in time for monitoring, updates and troubleshooting. With SaaS, you pay in vendor lock‑in and per‑user fees.
• Incident response: a blacklist problem on your own IP can consume hours of senior time. A SaaS outage is out of your hands, but you do not spend nights tuning RBL lists.
• Migration costs: moving between cPanel, self‑hosted stacks and SaaS platforms takes planning. Our article moving email between Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and cPanel without downtime shows how to minimize this cost.

In practice, organizations often end up with a hybrid approach: SaaS for core knowledge workers who need the full office suite, and self‑hosted email for secondary accounts, transactional messages or specific domains.

Security and Compliance: Who Controls What?

Security model of self‑hosted email

With self‑hosting, you own the entire security surface:

• Server hardening: OS updates, firewall rules, intrusion detection, SSH access policies
• Mail server hardening: TLS configuration, authentication policies, rate limits, spam/virus filtering
• Access control: password policies, 2FA (if your webmail and panel support it), VPN access to admin interfaces
• Data location: you decide in which data center and country your mailboxes and backups reside

This is powerful for organizations with KVKK/GDPR or sector‑specific requirements that demand data locality and custom retention policies. Our guide on KVKK and GDPR‑compliant hosting and data localisation outlines how to design hosting in a way that email, logs and backups all follow the same rules.

The flip side is that you must get it right. Misconfigured TLS, open relays, or outdated spam filters are your responsibility. You still benefit from the physical and network security of dchost.com data centers, but application‑level security is under your control.

Security model of Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

With Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, much of the security stack is handled by the provider:

• Always‑on TLS for SMTP and webmail connections
• Built‑in spam and malware filtering with global threat intelligence
• Integrated 2FA, SSO and conditional access controls
• Compliance features such as legal hold, DLP (data loss prevention) and auditing on higher‑tier plans

You still manage user accounts, passwords and access policies, but you delegate low‑level mail server hardening and spam engine maintenance. For many small teams without a dedicated sysadmin, this can be a safer default.

The trade‑off is that data location and retention policies are more constrained. You can choose broad regions, but not necessarily a specific data center. Some advanced compliance needs (very strict retention windows, air‑gapped backups, custom journaling) can still push organizations toward self‑hosting on dedicated or colocated servers.

DNS and authentication: non‑negotiables either way

Regardless of where your mailboxes live, you must configure modern email authentication correctly. This includes:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework): defines which servers may send mail for your domain
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): cryptographic signatures of outgoing mail
• DMARC: policy and reporting layer that tells receivers what to do with failed SPF/DKIM

On SaaS, you usually copy a few DNS records from their admin panel. On self‑hosted, you generate keys and craft records yourself. For a practical walkthrough, see our guide SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained for cPanel and VPS email.

Deliverability: Getting to the Inbox, Not the Spam Folder

Why deliverability feels “automatic” on Google Workspace and Microsoft 365

One of the biggest reasons businesses choose Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is that deliverability tends to work well by default:

• You send from IP ranges with long‑established reputations.
• Reverse DNS (PTR), SPF and DKIM are preconfigured for those IPs.
• Rate limits and abuse controls are enforced centrally to protect reputation.

That does not mean you can never land in spam – bad content, poor list hygiene or forwarding loops can still hurt – but you rarely fight low‑level issues like misconfigured rDNS or unknown IP ranges.

Self‑hosted deliverability: more knobs, more responsibility

With self‑hosted email, you own your sending reputation. This can be a huge advantage or a recurring headache:

• You choose which IPs you send from and how many domains they serve.
• You control rate limits, queue policies and bounce handling.
• You can implement advanced DNS records like MTA‑STS, TLS‑RPT and DANE/TLSA to further strengthen trust.

But you must also handle:

• IP warm‑up if you start sending from a new dedicated IP
• Blocklist checks and delisting if spam or compromised accounts appear
• Regular monitoring of SPF, DKIM, DMARC and rDNS

Our deliverability checklist why your emails go to spam on shared hosting and VPS covers exactly which technical signals receiver servers look at, and how to debug issues systematically.

Sending volume and type of email matters

When comparing deliverability, consider what kind of email you send and at what volume:

• Low volume, human‑written email (typical corporate mailbox usage) is the easiest to deliver on any platform.
• Transactional email (order confirmations, password resets, invoices) benefits from strong authentication, stable IPs and fast retries.
• Marketing or newsletter email is the hardest: list quality, unsubscribe handling, complaint rates and content all matter.

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are not marketing platforms. They have sending limits and policies that discourage bulk campaigns. For serious marketing, you typically integrate with a specialized email service regardless of where your main mailboxes live.

On self‑hosted infrastructure, you can separate traffic by using different sending domains and IPs for transactional vs marketing mail, which we cover in detail in our article using separate sending domains for transactional and marketing email. This separation is one of the biggest deliverability advantages of self‑hosting when done correctly.

Side‑by‑Side Comparison: Self‑Hosted vs Google Workspace/Microsoft 365

Hybrid Approaches: Best of Both Worlds

Pattern 1: SaaS for core users, self‑hosted for secondary accounts

Many customers we work with settle on a pragmatic hybrid:

• Senior staff, sales and management use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for tight integration with calendars, documents and collaboration.
• Operational roles, project‑specific addresses, or rarely used mailboxes live on a self‑hosted mail server (shared hosting, VPS or dedicated) at dchost.com.

This keeps license costs under control while still giving critical users the rich SaaS environment they expect. It also lets you experiment with self‑hosting deliverability at a lower risk, since your most important mailboxes are already on a major provider.

Pattern 2: Self‑hosted mailboxes, external relays for bulk sending

Another pattern is to host mailboxes and everyday email on your own infrastructure, but send marketing or heavy transactional traffic through a specialized third‑party service. In this model:

• Your self‑hosted server handles human‑to‑human communication, support tickets and internal mail.
• Order confirmations, receipts or newsletters flow through a platform optimized for high‑volume sending.

This keeps your primary IP’s reputation clean and simplifies unsubscribe handling and reporting for campaigns. Technically, it is just a matter of using different SPF/DKIM records and FROM domains for each sending stream, which again we cover in detail in the separate sending domains guide linked above.

Pattern 3: Email‑only hosting without a website

Some businesses want professional email on their own domain but no website (yet). In this case, an email‑only hosting architecture on dchost.com works very well: you point your MX, SPF, DKIM and other records to our infrastructure, manage mailboxes via a control panel, and optionally add a simple landing page later. We explain this pattern step by step in our article email‑only hosting architecture for business email, DNS and security.

Hybrid setups like these recognize that email is not one thing. Internal conversations, legal archiving, high‑volume marketing, and customer support all have different needs. Splitting them intelligently between self‑hosted infrastructure and SaaS tools often beats an “all‑or‑nothing” decision.

Practical Scenarios: Which Option Fits You?

Scenario 1: Small team, no dedicated IT, heavy collaboration

Profile:

• 5–20 people
• Rely heavily on shared documents, calendars, online meetings
• No dedicated system administrator

Best fit: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for all users, possibly paired with affordable web hosting for your website at dchost.com. The collaboration suite value is high and the admin burden is low. You still need to set up DNS correctly, but you do not have to manage an MTA or spam filters yourself.

Scenario 2: Growing company with many low‑usage mailboxes

Profile:

• 30–100+ mailboxes
• Many addresses are rarely used (info@, hr@, warehouse@, region‑specific mailboxes)
• Cost per mailbox is becoming significant

Best fit: Hybrid. Put core staff (management, sales, support) on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and move low‑usage accounts to self‑hosted email on a VPS or dedicated server at dchost.com. You can also gradually migrate more users to self‑hosting as your internal expertise grows.

Scenario 3: Agency or MSP managing dozens of client domains

Profile:

• Agency or IT provider with 20+ client domains
• Clients expect “we’ll handle your email and DNS” as part of the service
• Need isolation, central monitoring, and flexible pricing

Best fit: Multi‑tenant self‑hosted email on VPS, reseller hosting or dedicated servers. You can design a shared but isolated architecture for many domains, centralize updates and monitoring, and offer custom plans. Our article on multi‑tenant email and DNS architecture for agencies on one VPS or reseller hosting is a good blueprint for this scenario.

Scenario 4: Regulated industry with strict data locality and retention

Profile:

• Legal, healthcare, finance or public sector
• Clear rules about data location and retention (KVKK/GDPR or sector regulations)
• Need auditability and full control over backups and logs

Best fit: Self‑hosted email on dedicated servers or colocation in a specific region, with encryption, journaling and custom backup strategies. SaaS suites can still play a role, but for many such organizations, owning the full stack and being able to demonstrate where data lives and how it is backed up is a core requirement.

What Self‑Hosted Email Requires in Practice (So There Are No Surprises)

Operational checklist for self‑hosting

Before deciding to self‑host entirely, make sure you are comfortable with the following responsibilities (or that you have a partner who is):

• Keeping the OS and mail software updated
• Configuring and periodically reviewing firewall rules, SSH access and panel security
• Setting up and maintaining SPF, DKIM, DMARC and PTR records
• Monitoring mail queues, disk usage and log files
• Responding to abuse reports, compromised accounts or blocklist entries
• Managing backups and restore drills for mailboxes and configuration

These are not insurmountable tasks; thousands of organizations run their own mail infrastructure successfully. But they do require conscious attention. If you want to go deeper into these points, our email hosting choices explained: self‑hosted, shared or Google Workspace / Microsoft 365 article gives a structured decision tree and more operational detail.

When SaaS is the safer default

If you read the checklist above and feel that none of this is your team’s core competency, it is perfectly reasonable to choose Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 as your default, at least for now. You can still host your website, databases and applications at dchost.com, while delegating the complexity of email reputation and spam filtering to a large SaaS provider.

Nothing prevents you from re‑evaluating later. Many customers start with SaaS email while they grow, then move part or all of their infrastructure to self‑hosting once they have a dedicated IT person or clearer compliance needs.

Conclusion: How to Decide What’s Right for You

Self‑hosted email, Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are not competing “products” as much as different operating models. Self‑hosting gives you maximum control over cost, data location and architecture, at the price of more responsibility for security and deliverability. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 give you powerful collaboration suites and strong default deliverability, at the price of per‑user licensing and less granular control over where data lives and how mail flows. For many real‑world teams, the best answer is a hybrid model: SaaS where the office suite really adds value, and self‑hosting where you mainly need mailboxes, aliases and predictable infrastructure costs.

At dchost.com, we see all of these patterns in production every day: from small teams happy on SaaS plus simple web hosting, to agencies running multi‑tenant mail clusters on VPS, to enterprises with dedicated or colocated mail servers and strict compliance rules. If you are unsure which path matches your current stage, we are happy to help you map requirements to a concrete architecture and migration plan. Start by listing how many users you have, what kinds of email you send (internal, transactional, marketing), and any legal or data‑location constraints. With that in hand, we can design a setup on our shared hosting, VPS, dedicated or colocation platforms—and integrate it cleanly with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 where it makes sense—so your email stays fast, secure and reliably in the inbox.