Buy your own domain and hosting so you can always regain access to it.
It's hackernews so it astounds me that most people posting here use some free email instead of paying few buck for own domain and hosting.
I’ve done that for several years and given up. No matter how much I honed my server config, ensured my domain had DKIM, DMARC, SPF, DNSSEC, a proper TLS certificate for both the IMAP and SMTP servers and reverse PTR records that matched, I always had deliverability issues to clients using Outlook.com/Hotmail. Sometimes Gmail as well. All config checkers gave me full marks when I sent emails, I wasn’t in a single block list, I ALWAYS had issues. I’ve given up and am paying for ProtonMail on a custom domain now, it’s not worth the headache, honestly.
Personally, I pay for an email provider for the same reason I pay a cell provider instead of running my own SIP server - these things are fairly complex and I cannot afford to suffer a catastrophic failure that knowledgeable full-time staff could have prevented.
Own domain and hosting have their set of issues. Like how to make sure you don’t loose your domain to attacker due to phishing attack against your registrar support person.
If you are just an individual you may have difficulties in proving your ownership of a domain in case you loose it.
Don't shift the goalpost please.
We are talking about forgetting password for your email account.
Now the part about attacking your email/domain:
If somebody transfers your domain without your will you have to contact domain registry and you will get it back after a bit of back and forth. It happens, noting new here.
Unless you register .eu domain - there is a whole institution dealing with that and there is no easy and quick way to transfer the domain in a stealth way + long grace periods and better authorization so its much harder to even try to do that.
Compare that to Google - your account gets locked or even worse somebody gains access to your email and that's it. Your not getting it back.
Buying your own domain it's a great plan, but this not one of the problems it solves - you're just changing the crucial password from being your email one to your domain provider one.
You are the paying customer, contrary to Google experience you can just call support and regain access. You can even contact domain registry directly and transfer your domain to other hosting if your current one will suddenly go out of business or whatever.
There is no way to be locked out of your own domain after forgetting your password.
That's like basic stuff people! Buy your own domains already.