[Cthulhu_]

Exactly that. Plus, if you have to configure it, you're already doing more with e-mails and custom domains than 99% of average people who just use an address from a free provider or their ISP.

It's nontrivial to move away from e-mail-as-a-service. It shouldn't be, but we're stuck with decades of legacy and abuse. Years ago there was a statistic doing the rounds that either 80% or 99% of e-mail traffic was spam; I'm confident that is still the case, but thanks to technologies and big providers, end-users only see a fraction of it ending up even in their spam box, and even less in their actual mail. There was one in my non-spam gmail inbox the other day, the first one in years.

I run a wordpress blog with comments enabled as well, Akismet has stopped a million spam comments (99% of comments attempted to be poasted).

[sumtechguy]

This is the exact reason I keep my hotmail account. Which now seems to get me this 'you still you thhhhhhaaaat?'. 'would it make you feel better if I gave you an outlook one or a gmail?'

They filter like 99.99% of the junk. Usually 200-1000 a week (had a low of 20 a few weeks ago). They even show me what they are filtering. That is just 1 account. I have toyed with the idea of setting up my own domain and having my family have all their own emails. But that would mean managing it. Not terribly hard but just one more thing I do not want to mess with. 30 years ago I would have done it. Now I would rather it 'just work'.

Managing spam is a pain. I have been using the 'unsubscribe' links recently. You say then you are just verifying it is real. Well yeah, not like they are going to stop anyway. Worth a shot, but many times they actually respect it, unlike 15 years ago.