I am in the process of setting up my own mailserver. The webserver is already
online and I'm testing it and filling it with interesting stuff, etc.
The cost is minimal if you manage to get a cheap domain name like I did (like
up to 10 EUR per year in some cases below that). Just a bit of phantasy is
required for that. Also, there are lots of domain registrars out there, some
are (way) cheaper than others. As long as you are going to run your own
server, I think it makes sense to opt for the cheapest domain registrar (the
quality of their webhosting is irrelevant).
Electricity can be a non-issue if you use the Raspberry Pi. It will cost
somewhat more though than just the R. Pi itself - you need an SD card,
possibly an SD-card reader for your computer (for installation purposes) and
the power adapter costs extra too. The R. Pi basically does not affect your
electricity bill, I don't think it needs even 10Watts under load.
I had a computer suitable for this task and it doesn't "eat" more than 7
Euros per month in electricity. Remember that no high-end PC is needed,
500Mhz are probably fully sufficient (underclocking and undervolting are
really great for conserving power and reducing heat), one HDD is sufficient,
no disk-drive is needed after installation, no fancy GPU is needed (use a
mainboard with graphics on-board), soundcard and many other peripherals are
useless.
Setting up a personal mail server will solve the privacy and surveillance
issues, but can cause new issues altogether: spammers trying to use your
server for their needs. I have to find a way to deal with it yet, there has
to be some way of preventing that.
If I will find a way of securely running my own mail server, I'll post a
step-by-step how-to.
