Despite my initial misgivings, I would actually consider something like this, even at this price point, but there are a few things that for now are non-starters.
1) I’d need to feel secure my email would actually deliver correctly. Zack Whittaker on Twitter [1] mentioned that the CEO’s email wound up in his Gmail spam folder. This would be utterly unacceptable for me, even though I don’t frequently email new people.
2) The single domain per server totally makes this DOA for me. I have multiple domains with separate, non-aliased mailboxes, controlled via legacy GApps accounts. It winds up being a security advantage because I use different accounts/domains for different services and that means that the likelihood of me being severely hacked is lower as a result. But beyond that, a single domain designation seems off for this type of product. The people willing to spend $500 on this kind of hardware are the people who have multiple domains.
3) I worry about the long term future of a startup like this. If they go out of business, not only is my hardware now worthless, I now have to migrate my inboxes to Fastmail or GSuite or something else, or face configuring my own local mail server, which is what I was trying to avoid to begin with. And in my case, that would also potentially mean giving up grandfathered GApps accounts with 50 users and custom domain support.
I wish Helm luck and we need disruptive email startups and better turnkey hosting solutions, but I’m not sure this is the right solution at the moment.
[1]: https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1052619938349899776...