@nprofile1q... I've been on postfix+dovecot most of the time as well. Initially just postfix and mutt in screen over ssh. And then the last 10 or so years postfix+dovecot, but I skipped spamassassin because I remember that being quite high maintenance, so I've been relying on blocklists only. Which was not ideal.

Also I never really bothered configuring fulltext search in dovecot, so searching emails was always extra slow.

Yeah my email setup was pretty shit for a long time… :-)