Hybrid for now
I've been very impressed with Fastmail for a few years now - seriously committed to reliable service (replicating in real-time between IBM Linux and Sun Solaris hosts in different DCs, to minimise common points of failure: firmware bugs, hardware flaws, OS bugs etc). So far it's been rock-solid for me.
I handle a bit of mail routing myself right now though, on VPSs (I have a few addresses I want special handling for, like blocking particular senders on the SMTP level - Fastmail can only filter post-delivery) - in the next month or two I'll probably shift the balance in that direction a bit further, so everything hits my machines first, then gets copied into Fastmail.
Like the article says, it's not scary or rocket science, just a little bit of effort to get full control. Well worth it for a lot of The Reg's target audience I suspect.
