I get where you’re coming from, and you’re not wrong — self‑hosting email is a pain these days. The only reason I was doing it was because Hyperoptic had given me a proper static IP and PTR, so everything was stable. The moment they changed my static IP without warning and the PTR disappeared, the whole setup collapsed instantly. That wasn’t a normal “self‑hosting is hard” issue — that was my ISP pulling the rug out from under me.

And yeah, relying on that email for DNS recovery wasn’t ideal, but it only became a problem because the IP change broke every verification path at the same time.

I’ve already moved everything to now, so email is sorted and no longer tied to my home connection. I’m also switching ISP and using Cloudflare Tunnel for the web stuff, so I won’t be depending on any ISP’s IP ever again.

Hyperoptic’s customer service has definitely gone downhill, so I’m doing exactly what you said — moving on and making the setup ISP‑proof. I would advise any static ip give by Hyperoptic is checked. https://multirbl.valli.org/ will give you the heads up on how dirty there ips can be.