Part of the problem is that many years ago certain
people decided it would be a good idea to tightly
couple email to domain names (DNS). Previously email
needed only IP addresses to work.
The result is that now when you are configuring SMTP
you have to also configure DNS. That means more things
that can go wrong, and more things to check as you are
setting things up.
It also means you may need to pay a fee for a domain name.
This is because we all submit to the notion of an ICANN root
and commercial registrars selling (renting) names that
cost nothing to create. Thus email is not solely under your
control. You generally have to play the ICANN DNS game, only
because your email recipients are playing. Nothing stops
anyone from running their own root though. And this is what
is done with private DNS inside organizations.
And then, as if that DNS complication was not already enough
to take control of email away from you, you have various
schemes trying to prevent spam that discriminate for or
against mail you send based on IP address and domain name.
Can you operate email without DNS? Technically yes. There
was a time before DNS, and email worked just fine.
Practically speaking, today you need DNS, whether it's under
ICANN's root or your own.
All this hassle steers you to just accept third party
email hosting. Profiting from this arrangement has become
a career for many a man. And with "the cloud" many are
hoping to cash in yet again, as organizations who once ran
controlled own email feel pressured to let a cloud computing
vendor control it for them.
The fact that all this third party control makes
warrantless search and surveillance so easy is but one side
effect. Centralising hundreds and thousands of accounts in
third parties make the spammer's job easier, too. If you
think about it, there are many unwanted side effects of
centralizing email. When every sender and recipient are
connected directly to each other via a network, why would
you want to prevent them from sending messages to each other
directly?
With the constant connectivity and bandwidth we have today
in many places, the centralisation and outsourcing of email
is baffling to me... it is nonsensical... until you remember
how much of a PITA it is setting up email.:)
It's no wonder we let third parties handle it. Is this PITA by design? Who
cares? Let's just fix it. More of these projects should
exist. Or made public (I imagine many of these are personal
setups now being released for public use). I have my own
that uses qmail.