Gmail professional vs own server vs anything else

My own configuration is currently a custom built setup with Qmail for SMTP, Dovecot as POP3/IMAP connector, Squirrelmail for limited but fast webmail access and SOGO for full featured but slow webmail access.

If you are not a geek, then building your own system with building blocks like a separate SMTP server, POP3 and IMAP connector is probably not an option. If you still want to have all emails on your own hardware, then Zimbra might be an option. I have heard some positive stories about it.

I am not a fan of Gmail. Emails are personal or may contain business information which I don't want to share. That is for me reason enough to not store them in the cloud.

Thanks for the reply...
We have serious security issues. By law our email info have to meet a level of being secure. So far, it appears that Gmail Pro meets the standards, but I'm struggling to get a firm, clear, certain answer.

With due consideration of lammert's concerns as well as some usability concerns, I tried GMail. I'm still a bit weirded out by Google having all me email, but once you get used to having really high-quality search integrated into your email, it's hard to give it up.

I don't know what GMail Pro is, but I do use Google Apps GMail as well as the regular one. As far as I can see, they are fundamentally the same in terms of usage.

I'm using GMail for about three years now. There are many positive things like having it accessible from everywhere. I have found two problems that are not so big for me, but could pose an issue for you:

1. search is not precise. Apparently, they are using the same algorithm as searching the web. Now, this is nice because you could find some stuff really fast, but sometimes it simply fails to find a message. It happened to me like 10 times so far. I had an email and I knew for certain it contained a word, for exampl XYZ. Running the search on it found nothing. The I opened the mailbox and manually searches a few hundred messages (because it was important) and found it. It did contain XYZ in the text.

2. google can change anything regardless of whether you like it or not. You just have to acknowledge that you understand the change, but there's nothing you can do about it. For example, latest changes in making all Google Apps accounts act like real Google accounts, makes me have to log in and log out each time I wish to switch from my personal and business email address. Earlier I was able to keep personal account in one browser tab and business one in another. I also use Google Analytics and Docs and I have to log in and out all the time, because those are included in the package. Now, it would be nice if I could just opt out to use the old system, but they are automatically migrating everyone by March 1st this year.

All this being said, it's still beats the hassle of running your own email server, so if these two issues are not so important for you, go ahead.