> They're all one-liners in DNS config
$1 - turn the screw
$9,999 - knowing which screw to turn
$1 - turn the screw
$9,999 - knowing which screw to turn
It's nontrivial to move away from e-mail-as-a-service. It shouldn't be, but we're stuck with decades of legacy and abuse. Years ago there was a statistic doing the rounds that either 80% or 99% of e-mail traffic was spam; I'm confident that is still the case, but thanks to technologies and big providers, end-users only see a fraction of it ending up even in their spam box, and even less in their actual mail. There was one in my non-spam gmail inbox the other day, the first one in years.
I run a wordpress blog with comments enabled as well, Akismet has stopped a million spam comments (99% of comments attempted to be poasted).
They filter like 99.99% of the junk. Usually 200-1000 a week (had a low of 20 a few weeks ago). They even show me what they are filtering. That is just 1 account. I have toyed with the idea of setting up my own domain and having my family have all their own emails. But that would mean managing it. Not terribly hard but just one more thing I do not want to mess with. 30 years ago I would have done it. Now I would rather it 'just work'.
Managing spam is a pain. I have been using the 'unsubscribe' links recently. You say then you are just verifying it is real. Well yeah, not like they are going to stop anyway. Worth a shot, but many times they actually respect it, unlike 15 years ago.
If you're thinking of setting up a program, it's worth your time to read over some existing program policies - those policies encapsulate a lot of experience that the existing programs have had on their platforms. Your ideal policy will probably differ, but it's worth thinking about why the other program policies are the way they are.