Didn't know they stopped working with regular email servers, that is a huge letdown. I'm guessing this was quite recent?

That was their one big plus and while I avoided it because of PGP, this means that it really has no upside over XMPP for me.

I appreciate the simplicity of hosting ChatMail versus a regular mail server. It's simpler, lighter weight, and better suited for the chat use case. It's basically the ideal messaging platform for my needs.