[Arnavion]

You don't need to self-host or host somewhere else either. You can use regular free GMail with a custom domain of your choice. I do this with mine.

[matt_heimer]

Info? Because Google Apps for your domain also known as G Suite (legacy) is the method we've used for this and is going away as a free option. The other approach is to integrate a free gmail account with a mail hosting provider. You can use mailgun or similar to do it cheap but it still means you host your domain email server somewhere.

[charcircuit]

Google domains lets me do it for free.

[Arnavion]

True, my domain is also from Google domains (it's a .dev). I didn't think this feature was exclusive to that, but maybe it is.

[matt_heimer]

Sounds like you might be using the free Google email forwarding feature outlined at https://domains.google/get-started/email/ To directly receive and send email from your custom domain Google upsells you to Google Workspaces https://domains.google/learn/how-to-use-email-forwarding/

Some other domain providers do offer email forwarding so its not exactly a Google exclusive.

[kashmirix]

I'm experimenting with CloudFlare's email forwarding (currently in beta) and it works very nice. Also, it's free and doesn't require changing registrars.