I don't think people usually complain about it being too much work in a sense that you have to put in several hours a week. People usually even like the initial setup procedure because it's fun. When I was studying self-hosting things was just another hobby.
For me it's now more about always having it in the back of my mind that I should do regular updates, make sure the disks are fine and everything is healthy. If something goes wrong the first thought will be "something broke" and not "oh I guess the provider has some issues, let's try again later". Or if in a few years I don't want to do it anymore I know I'll always postpone moving it to a provider because it'll be a hassle.
There's just so many other things to worry about or work on that I don't want to also add time to make sure my email server is running.
> I don't think people usually complain about it being too much work in a sense that you have to put in several hours a week. People usually even like the initial setup procedure because it's fun. When I was studying self-hosting things was just another hobby.
I wonder if this might not cause some enthusiasts to go for far more complicated set-ups than they really need, which in turn causes a bit of a hang-over when they have less time for the "hobby".
> There's just so many other things to worry about or work on that I don't want to also add time to make sure my email server is running.
I'd argue that of all the things you could self-host, email is probably among the ones where the juice is least worthy of the squeeze. It legitimately is a constant pain in the ass from set-up to the daily operations.
> having it in the back of my mind that I should do regular updates, make sure the disks are fine and everything is healthy.
All of that can be easily automated. If my system starts getting flaky, I get an email telling me well before it actually fails. Theoretically, if an automated update fails, I'll be notified of that as well, but that hasn't happened in 15 year or so, so it's been a while since it was tested.
For me it's now more about always having it in the back of my mind that I should do regular updates, make sure the disks are fine and everything is healthy. If something goes wrong the first thought will be "something broke" and not "oh I guess the provider has some issues, let's try again later". Or if in a few years I don't want to do it anymore I know I'll always postpone moving it to a provider because it'll be a hassle.
There's just so many other things to worry about or work on that I don't want to also add time to make sure my email server is running.