Ask an architect if it's difficult to build a house, and he'll scare you with tales of complexity. But that doesn't mean you can't build a shed yourself.

It can't be completely automated, but it isn't as difficult or time-consuming as people paint it to be (especially sysadmins!). I've been doing it for nearly 18 years now, maintenance takes perhaps 30 minutes every 2 months or so. There is more to do every 8 years or so, as Linux distributions go out of date, and your providers sometimes go out of business.

I have my suspicions as to all the FUD regarding running your own E-mail server. Secure personal E-mail distributed on many independent servers with automatic in-transit encryption is not in everyone's interest.