Self hosting mail server is one of the worst ideas. You need to have top notch security, always updating patches and on top of that somehow manage to get your mail not to go into spam folder. Google and Microsoft don't usually like self hosted emails.

If you still are going to go through with this, good luck! I'm going to check regularly how your path goes. Sadly I can't help you at all, just some wide words repeated by others.

Debian is excellent choice.

If you do only web and mail you could consider a web space instead of a VPS. For example Netcup.eu offers packets which include email, Ionos offers one mail account per user account too I think.

Also as you said self hosting emails is quite some pain because Gmail, Microsoft etc blacklist small mail servers rather quickly. Depending on your motivation you could also use Protonmail or mailbox.org as mail provider with your own domain.

Anyway, Debian is a solid choice due to long support times.

Not worth it unless you use it for automation and personal notifications. You'll have to wrestle with google, microsoft and others to accept your mailserver. But if you do want to try, I recommend mail-in-a-box.

Please do add a tag to your post as stated on the sublemmy sidebar! Thank you. :)

I’m an avid self hoster. I will self host anything I can, except email. It’s a bad idea all around. From security, complex administration, to not having a two factor password emailed out to you because of an issue on your network. And more reasons. Digital ocean has a decent article on it as well as many others. There are plenty of good providers out there to use. Personally I use Protonmail.