"Our data" does not exclusively mean data we share with others. There are many use cases that don't require our data to live on a centralized system. It is my belief talking about this subject causes a good degree of cognitive dissonance in people who are intent on building systems which rely on centralized storage. The fact is, the only value in centralized storage of data that isn't entangled with other's data is that it brings 'value' to the company and its shareholders. It's not bringing long term value to the users, that's for damn certain.
My company, www.drh.net, provides an SAAS or on-premises Mail Transfer Agent, GreenArrow Engine.
You can run it in your network and tightly lock down the system. We can take care of all of the email deliverability setup and operations tasks, if you want.
One advantage of running licensed software on your network is that you don't pay per-message fees, so for higher volume it's really economical compared to a service like SendGrid.
Legitimate bulk email is not a thing you want to have decentralized - the anti-spam efforts of the past 20 years or so have made that all but impossible.
Not true. We have plenty of clients using their own decentralized email servers and getting great inbox delivery of legitimate bulk email.
To get good results on your own server, you need:
(a) To be sending email that people want to receive.
(b) To have the technology setup correctly. It's not hard; we do it all the time for our clients.
(c) It's greatly beneficial to above ~20k messages/day on your own server. Not required, but being above that point lets the ISPs gather statistical data on your complaint and open rates, which allows reputation filters to click in.
