[Samon]

For me, owning my own email domain is far more about control than privacy. I currently use some MX and SMTP trickery to forward all of my email to Gmail, effectively using Gmail as my 'email client' - but because the domain is mine, I can change that without too much headache, unlike if I were just using an @gmail.com address.

[defaultcompany]

You don’t own a domain name you rent it. If you ever forget to renew it or you are unable to renew it for some reason then it becomes available for anyone else to register. At that point the new owner can receive all your email and potentially access any accounts which use that email as 2FA. I’m not saying you should never do this but it’s not a silver bullet.

[int_19h]

Making sure that your domain registration is always current is not a difficult thing, though. You can register for fairly long periods of time, and set up multiple alerts to manually renew long before it expires.

[jamiek88]

yep cos of Covid namecheap sold my domain to a squatter who now wants $10k for something i've renewed for years for $12.

That was so shitty coming back round to reality and everything broken. Still upset about it. To this day I have no idea why the card didn't pay as always.

[jwalton]

How do your have your outgoing mail configured? Up until recently Gmail would let you send email from another domain, but they seem to have shut this down.

[Tagbert]

I have my domain hosted on a service that provides web hosting and email. I configured Gmail to pickup that email and merge with my gmail mails. I can choose to send as either my gmail address or my personal domain address. I just tried it now and it worked just fine.

[quickthrower2]

Also about cost? You could use proton, but gmail is free I guess.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

To register a domain, you must provide an existing email address (not at that domain, of course). True story: I registered a domain with email from openmailbox.org. That email provider has closed, and my domain went puff with it.