Comment Re:Not Worth it unless you have a very good reason (Score 1) 554
On this point I have to disagree. gmaill is highly capable and all, but I actually prefer roundcube's interface over gmail's.
I also disagree that maintaining a mail server competently is that hard for a single domain with maybe a half-dozen users. If you stick to packages provided by a linux distribution, distribution updates will handle most security updates. Many ISPs have blessed relays for your use that alleviates the blacklist problem significantly.
That said, I have co confess current state of gmail makes it hard to find reason to do it yourself. The only reason I could think of is fear for what google could do in the future given the fact they really can hold your email address hostage. If you pay for your own domain (using any subdomain like offered by dyndns or co.cc is begging for them to hold your domain hostage down the road (as dyndns already has done to its users), landing you in the same place. Since so many free offerings from other companies have either evaporated or 'altered' in unacceptable ways, it's not unreasonable to be wary of Google's take on the perceived business value of free email with ads. If data suggests the cost is higher than the revenue sometime later, say goodbye to your email.
I got fairly disgusted with roundcube for a ongoing bug that would cause it to loop and use %100 of the processor power on a box. That was earlier this year, so it may have been fixed but it had been an ongoing bug report for quite a while. I suppose a lot of it depends on the level your running a box at and how much Interaction there is with other networks and why. Running forums that can send out many thousands of notices a day can be a big deal to manage, as you can get filtered fairy easily ever for doing seemingly nothing wrong (e.g. you didn't throttle down your send rate low enough for one network). Your point about gmail taking away an address is very valid and a concern I have pondered. Using your own domain via gmail and backing up your mail solves much of this. As I mentioned though, there are things like forums, mailing lists, and discussion groups, who's volume of mail is not permissible to run through google and you have little choice but to either pay a 3rd party server for their out bound mail service which often has it's own limitations or to run your own server.
