Setting up your own mail server is a thorny problem. I've been setting up my (family's) own mail server, and despite having lots of experience, it has taken a month already. Even when encryption, authentication, spam and sieve filtering, IMAP and webmail work, there's still no SMTP backup or alternative server in case you accidentally end up being blacklisted somewhere. I'm not sure investing money and effort is really worth it for just a few people's mailboxes.
The whole process keeps getting more complicated as the internet grows more hostile and end-user requirements increase.
This project sounds interesting and much necessary, but the real problem to me is the economy of scale. If 10 Unix guys sit together and set up 2 servers for 20-30 personal mailboxes, the time and money might be worth it. Setting up all those services, filtering and redundancy by yourself for just yourself – and monitoring them continuously – is wasteful and painful, even if you like to tinker with Unix systems.
There used to be a few geek-oriented ISPs around that offered SMTP/DNS backup, spam filtering and similar services so you could off-load some effort, but I guess they've fallen prey to low-margin virtual server business.
The whole process keeps getting more complicated as the internet grows more hostile and end-user requirements increase.
This project sounds interesting and much necessary, but the real problem to me is the economy of scale. If 10 Unix guys sit together and set up 2 servers for 20-30 personal mailboxes, the time and money might be worth it. Setting up all those services, filtering and redundancy by yourself for just yourself – and monitoring them continuously – is wasteful and painful, even if you like to tinker with Unix systems.
There used to be a few geek-oriented ISPs around that offered SMTP/DNS backup, spam filtering and similar services so you could off-load some effort, but I guess they've fallen prey to low-margin virtual server business.