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Own your own domain, point it to the email hosting provider of your choice, and if something went horribly wrong, switch providers.

Domains are cheap; never use an email address that's email-provider-specific. That's orthogonal to whether you host your own email or use a professional service to do it for you.



This is my plan.

I will lose some email history, but at least I don’t lose my email future.

However, you can’t own a domain, you are just borrowing it. There is still a risk that gets shut down too, but I don’t think it is super common.


As for the domain risks, my suggestions is to stick with the .com/.net/.org or something common in your country and avoid novelty ones such as .app, .dev, etc, even if you can't get the shortest and simpler name. And if you have some money to spare, just renew it to 10 years.


Even if you renew for 10 years, set a calendar reminder annually to check in and make sure your renewal info is still good.


You can also top it up every year as well. Two for one :)


> I will lose some email history, but at least I don’t lose my email future.

I back up all my email every day, independent of my hosting provider. I have an automatic nightly sync to my laptop, which happens right before my nightly laptop backups.


Why should you lose some email history? Just move the mails to a differente folder.

I self host my mails but still use a freemail for the contact address for my providers. No chicken and egg problem for me.


If doing so id also recommend not using the same email or domain for the registrar and for your email host…. If you are locked out of one you’d want to be able to access the other to change things.


Agreed. I’ve had the same email address for a decade now but cycled through the registrar’s email, Gmail, and M365 in that time. Makes it easy to switch.




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