Instead, it lives inside your own house, and you set up your own disk drive to hold incoming and outgoing messages. These servers rely on whichever company provided your email address, so Google runs the Gmail servers, Microsoft takes care of Outlook, and so on.Ī private email server doesn’t sit in the server farms of Google or Microsoft. AppleĪn email server is a data drive that stores your messages before you download them to a client on your computer or a page in a web browser. What is a private email server? Ordinarily, your emails live in a data center like this Apple facility in Iowa. In this guide, we’ll explain why you might want to take control of managing and storing your messages, and how to set up your own private email server. If you want to remove your inbox from the clutches of Microsoft, Apple, or Google, you can establish your own. Private email servers aren’t just for prominent politicians.