I've run my own mail server ever since I got something resembling broadband internet in 1996. Back then spam was non-existent, Sendmail was the emperor without clothes about to be dethroned and I hacked sendmail.cf without needing to look at the the bible [1].
I've never regretted running my own server, nor have I ever contemplated moving to a hosted solution. Spam is not a problem either, Spamassassin in combination with a greylist make for a nearly spam-free experience. The whole setup has been migrated from the original Pentium-66 via an aBit-BP6 (SMP for the masses [2], retired in 2009) to the current Intel SS-4200 (upgraded to a dual-core Pentium but still limited to 2GB). In practice a Raspberry Pi would be enough to run a viable mail server so even this rather anaemic setup does its job without breaking a sweat.
The whole setup consists of Debian (Sid) running Exim through a smarthost, feeding through Spamassassin + greylistd into Dovecot. Apart from some auto-manual intervention to cope with Microsoft/Google/... not coping with the greylisting and thus needing whitelisting it more or less just works. In other words, just go ahead and run your own server.
I've never regretted running my own server, nor have I ever contemplated moving to a hosted solution. Spam is not a problem either, Spamassassin in combination with a greylist make for a nearly spam-free experience. The whole setup has been migrated from the original Pentium-66 via an aBit-BP6 (SMP for the masses [2], retired in 2009) to the current Intel SS-4200 (upgraded to a dual-core Pentium but still limited to 2GB). In practice a Raspberry Pi would be enough to run a viable mail server so even this rather anaemic setup does its job without breaking a sweat.
The whole setup consists of Debian (Sid) running Exim through a smarthost, feeding through Spamassassin + greylistd into Dovecot. Apart from some auto-manual intervention to cope with Microsoft/Google/... not coping with the greylisting and thus needing whitelisting it more or less just works. In other words, just go ahead and run your own server.
[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510299.do
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABIT_BP6
[3] http://ss4200.pbworks.com/w/page/5122751/FrontPage