Email options with a personal domain name?

Hi all,

I'm after some insights from GZ'rs who utilize their own personal domains for email.

I currently use a parked domain that offers an email forwarding service with emails landing in iCloud & Gmail.It's free, easy, very rarely changes and is managed by my domain name registrar.

The drive for change is that I want to use Cloudflare for a personal web service hosted from home. As soon as I change my name servers to Cloudflare to do that, I'll break my email forwarding.

As far as I can tell, I have the below options, but am happy to hear more!

Use a forwarding service like MailGun: Migrate Name servers to Cloudflare Create the MX records in Cloudflare to point to Mailgun Set forwarders in Mailgun to current email hosting providers (iCloud/Gmail)

Pros:

Free

No changes required on end devices (Mobiles mostly)

Cons:

Possibly less privacy than registrar provider

iCloud/Gmail can "read" emails as well

No new "features" (e.g. From address doesn't currently domain as iCloud doesn't allow it)

Use a email hosting service (Fastmail, net24 etc) Migrate Name servers to Cloudflare Create the MX records in Cloudflare to point to mail host Host mailboxes on hosting service + possibly still use forwarders

Pros:

One less system the emails travel through, so possibly more privacy

From address correctly matches domain

Cons:

Extra cost

Re-config of end devices (minimal)

Potentially less spam protection based on hosting provider

Potentially less integration/features as free email hosting from iCloud / GMail (calendars etc)

I'm excluding hosting my own mail server at home, deeming it too much hassle for security patching, mail scrubbing, uptime etc.

I'm also excluding O365 initially as they also don't allow using your own domain (unless you move to a higher tier plan)

Thoughts, experiences and recommendations (architecture or providers) most welcome!