Originally Posted by Varius

The reality of it is, most people have a hard time getting their mail through if they use their own mailserver. How many people do you think actually take care to go through all the configuration (bounce management, rDNS, DKIM, Sender-ID, etc...) to ensure delivery? Not to mention, that even if they do all that you still have high risks of being "junked" if you have no prior sender reputation.

Gmail is a good solution for those people, as despite the fact spammers still use it to blast out mail, it generally hits the inbox 9 times out of 10.