If you only need a small handful of email addresses, often the hosted service can provide those for a lower (or similar) monthly cost to that of a VPS (assuming

If you only need a small handful of email addresses, often the hosted service can provide those for a lower (or similar) monthly cost to that of a VPS (assuming you're dedicating the VPS to just email). The blacklist issues others have pointed out are real. Some IPs are on blacklists and you will not be able to get them removed without an outrageous amount of leg work. Most of the premium email hosting places make sure they're not on those blacklists. Personally, I use FastMail.fm. I've gotten the impression that if TSHTF, they'll fix it fast. The price is reasonable. They're not Google. When I get a website up that can't be served via static pages, I'll be going the VPS or other cloud service, but for email, I'm much happier leaving that to a premium provider.