I've been running email servers for my personal and business email for nigh on two decades now. It's "an hour or two of maintenance a quarter", on average, and is nowhere near as big of a deal as many would make it out to be. Is it 100% perfect? Certainly not. Would it be 'easier' (FSVO) to just give my email to gmail/O365/fastmail? Probably. However, I feel "the net" was meant to be (and works best as) a series of decentralized systems. Feeding my data into a 'just this side of a walled-garden' ecosystem does not help the net, so I don't do it.
