Setting up SMTP and IMAP servers isn't that hard[1], and you get a lot of cool features that you don't get anywhere else, like piping email into shell scripts,

Setting up SMTP and IMAP servers isn't that hard[1], and you get a lot of cool features that you don't get anywhere else, like piping email into shell scripts, or the ability to selectively bounce spam (instead of storing it in a spam folder) and reading email via mutt in a pinch (I much prefer that to web frontends). You also get to learn a lot - every hacker should be able to send an email via telnet at least. [1] It can be hard to get everyone to accept your email, but you can just relay it through an upstream provider like Messagelabs[2] or your ISP to solve that problem. [2] Not a recommendation, just an example. I'm sure there are better ones out there.