For a personal mail server, it really isn't that hard and isn't much more work than setting up an HTTP server. Obviously if you're going to be a mail admin for

For a personal mail server, it really isn't that hard and isn't much more work than setting up an HTTP server. Obviously if you're going to be a mail admin for an organization you'll need to put more work into it, but propping up postfix and some mail frontend on a personal server is pretty easy. No frontend you use will ever be as useful and simple as a big webmail provider's (like Gmail), but just ensuring successful delivery and receipt of mail really isn't that hard unless your server happens to be in some IP space with poor reputation. If it was that hard, email would be a lot more broken than it currently is.