Disagree. We pay for convenience all the time. I just did in buying a synology NAS even though I could have pieces together my own solution (and have in the past). Having a working, maintained, stable, full featured email server that interops with the world isn’t something you can do quickly on your own even if you have the skills.
Of course, I agree with that. But this is, at least in my opinion, a very niche product. People who even understand what the product is would probably not be willing to pay a subscription for something they could setup on their own. Of course I could be completely wrong :)
Email is hard to do right, first I’m likely going to spend 2-3x the price on a server, so instantly we have 5 years of subscription covered by that price.
Then I have to buy an IP in a space that has a good reputation. Then I need to setup offsite backups, setup TLS and DKIM, plus a lot of stuff I’m sure I’m missing. Then I have to stay on top of patches and general maintenance. Plus I have to buy a domain name. Suddenly we’re looking at let’s say a 10 year lifespan before you need to upgrade. You are probably going to be basically even on costs but home built has a hundred of hours sunk into it too.
It's true that email is hard to do right, and there are lots of fiddly bits like DKIM. And you need to have control of your DNS. And, and and. I agree with parent's hundred-hour estimate.
It's not true that you need to spend $200-300 on a server; an email server for home use runs fine on a low-powered fanless Intel Next, for example.
Hardly anyone does offsite backups of their home server, unless they do it by relying on an online backup service. What's the threat-model? Is it that a fire might destroy their server, as well as their in-home backups? OK, backup to a flash key, and give it to a friend to look after.
