[eins1234]

More important than the current email provider you happen to use is controlling your email _address_, and this means using a domain you control.

It enables for a surprisingly pain-free email migration experience as I found out not too long ago, where all you have to do is point the DNS records to the new provider and do an IMAP import from your old email provider, and everything will just work as you'd expect.

If I wasn't already sold on the power of federation, that would definitely have sold me.

As for the actual email provider, I'm currently using Microsoft's standalone Exchange Online plan, which costs $4 per month: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/exchange/compa...

No major complaints so far.

[visarga]

Yes, you can get a domain, but it would depend on yet another email address, right? And if you ever forget to renew it, you will lose it.

[owenmarshall]

It is a best practice to separate your registrar email from a domain you have, yes.

Fastmail makes this easy for me: I have an @fastmail.fm email from them that I have only ever provided to my domain registrar and I’ve set my MUA to scream and shout loudly if it ever gets mail.

That + using Fastmail for all my domains makes this seamless for me.

> And if you ever forget to renew it, you will lose it.

I’ve had one gmail account nuked by Our Benevolent Overlord’s AI for no rhyme or reason. At least it was unimportant, but it still happened - and I have zero recourse to get it back.

Losing control of my domain or a paid email service? That’s entirely on me ;)

[sneak]

I did a writeup recently on just this, and how to deal with it:

https://sneak.berlin/20201029/stop-emailing-like-a-rube/