[judge2020]

Many registrars offer catch-all forwarding (to your free personal email), which would be your best bet if you don't expect to need to send email.

If you can afford $6/mo, Google Workspace isn't bad, there's generally better security and it grants you a lot of control over your account's settings (and will remove ads from the Gmail app on your phone, even when only looking at your @gmail account inbox).

Otherwize, Zoho works, but now costs $12/user/year (it used to be free) so ymmv. Great if you were planning on pure POP/IMAP usage anyways.

[Marsymars]

Wait, the Gmail app on phones has ads?

[judge2020]

Yes, it's unfortunate. I had forgotten about it since I've had a GSuite locally for a while but I see them when someone else opens their app.

https://www.queryclick.com/app/uploads/2015/10/Gmail-ads-101...

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7019460?hl=en

[Marsymars]

Ah, I guess they're only for the Promotions and Social inbox categories, and I have inbox categories disabled.

If I saw an ad in my email client, my immediate action would be to find a new email client.