Mail (SMTP) is even worse.

Here in Spain it seems better. We don't have tons of alternatives for web services, so lots end up on the typical clouds, but email hosting it seems every region has at least one ajuntament that runs their very own email servers. Helps that the country politically and socially is a bit decentralized since the beginning of the republic, but I was (pleasantly) surprised how many local governments here actually manage their own emails.

See https://mxmap.be/ and follow the links for other countries.

Self-hosting mail infra is a forgotten skill, indeed