Quote:
Originally Posted by n5bb
I think that many people improperly consider the risk of various events. My guess is that the risk of an improper government request for your messages is several orders of magnitude less than your PC hard drive failing, a fire burning up your PC, or a thief or family member stealing your PC. I trust the reliability and security of my Fastmail email store much more than anything I could manage myself at my house.
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I agree completely. I've run my own mail server on and off over the course of several years and keep coming back to FastMail as it just makes far more sense to outsource it than having to deal with it myself.
My reasons for running my own server were always more about certain features that I could deploy myself that other providers don't have (Sieve editheader and proper iOS push support were two really big ones, not to mention some enhanced server-side folder rule scripting on the message stores for auto-filing). iOS push is something that FastMail
implemented last year, and did a really good job of it, and it was at that point that I decided I could live without the other features in favour of the stability and reliability that FastMail provides. I've been telling my colleagues for years that, compared to most other mainstream providers, FastMail offers almost all of the features you'd want from running your own server anyway, and it's pretty much true for all but the most esoteric advanced features.
Even leaving aside all of the risks
n5bb mentions — in my case I run multiple, encrypted backups both on-site and off-site, use IMAP to pull down all of my email to two client workstations, and used full-disk encryption on the server — you're also left having to keep up with the latest security updates, deal with the issues of hardening your server, and of course you're a victim of the stability of your own Internet connection, which for most people is just a typical home-grade connection. I'm fairly confident that a professional service provider like FastMail is going to be
far more on top of creating a secure computing environment than anything that I want to be bothered looking after on a regular basis.