>Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain Agreed, that's why you would use a single, cheap Atom box sitting under your desk managing all

>Having to manage the cron jobs running on each server is a pain Agreed, that's why you would use a single, cheap Atom box sitting under your desk managing all of your cron jobs. >spending an hour to save $20 isn't worth it This isn't saving $20, it is saving $240 per year, so having your own hardware is break-even for year one. Year two is essentially free. >it's the same reason I use Postmark [...] for my email Email is an entirely different beast, dealing lots of config files, blacklists, and a kludge of MTAs/ MUAs. I completely understand outsourcing that piece of operations. >instead of buying hardware and colocating There is no reason such operations need to be run from a datacenter/ colo. Any office/ business connection should be adequate to run cron jobs.