Mmm. I'm sure people have had bad experiences. However I run my own mail server (and no others who also do) for myself, my company and a few other domains I host with almost no effort. It's true I have fewer than a dozen users, but I'm sure most people would be the same way.
I just upgraded it this weekend, otherwise I haven't actually had to touch it in the 5 years since I originally set it up. Support ends for the Ubuntu LTS release it was based on next month, and I chose to migrate to new server software (dovecot) without much difficulty at all. I think anyone moderately skilled with sysadmin tendencies could manage it.
But I confess I personally have a gmail account that I use most of all. I receive lots of mail daily, and none of the open-source clients (webmail or otherwise) have managed to compare in terms of usability. Priority Inbox is the most recent example of something that I would struggle to live without.
What about other people's spam filters? That's the biggest problem I've heard about is being blacklisted because of being an unknown sender or on some VPS service or something like that.
I just upgraded it this weekend, otherwise I haven't actually had to touch it in the 5 years since I originally set it up. Support ends for the Ubuntu LTS release it was based on next month, and I chose to migrate to new server software (dovecot) without much difficulty at all. I think anyone moderately skilled with sysadmin tendencies could manage it.
A good guide is here (though I am not running the described spam or virus filtering, and neither am I using EC2 myself): http://www.exratione.com/2012/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-1204... - there are many other guides online.
But I confess I personally have a gmail account that I use most of all. I receive lots of mail daily, and none of the open-source clients (webmail or otherwise) have managed to compare in terms of usability. Priority Inbox is the most recent example of something that I would struggle to live without.