Dear Beatrice, on self hosting :

 

Strenghts :

 

- Security control which is an main concern

- Easy to create backups

- Unlimited space

- Ability to blacklist

- Unlimited email accounts

- Unlimited bandwidth access

 

Weakness :

 

- You'd need a specialist who know servers

- You'd need a full time person to ensure all bugs/fixes are updated upon release

- Bandwidth costs will be too expensive, depends on your model

- Extra software overheads to run mail services, including anti-spam

- Server hardware

- Public Ip addresses or subnets.

- DNS servers

 

If you want to be a hosting provider, then add backup/mirror costs and power backup units. If you have the budget for self hosting, I'd suggest that you google for dedicated online servers that can will not only provide a dedicated public ip address but also disk space and monthly bandwidth to match.

 

Or the other approach locally would be to place your servers at eg KDN but then work out the server and bandwidth hosting costs. Ideally, a datacentre is necessary due to dust free, air conditioning, backup power, gigabit connections and tech support.

 

HTHs.