Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving messages using electronic devices. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, mail (hence e- + mail). Email is a ubiquitous and very widely used communication medium; in current use, an email address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.
Email is the the most important written form of communication and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
Email will Last
Zawinski’s Law rightly expressed that, “Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”
Whichever tool you use and assume is better than email for communication will eventually come around to either being replaced or needing to be constantly upgraded, playing catch-up. An email sent decades ago can still be read by an email client today and will be in the next decade and more.
Text Messages and their equivalent methods are suitable for more synchronous communication. They have their places, and one is not a replacement for the other.
There are many “free” email providers, such as Microsoft’s Outlook, Google’s Gmail, Apple’s iCloud, and others. If you are involved in any form of formal and business communications, investing in a domain you can own and use for your emails would be wiser.
Own the Email Domain
Owning your domain name and pointing the MX record to whatever hosting provider you want instead of self-hosting a server at home is the sweet spot for controlling your email while minimizing unforeseen headaches.
It also has an aura of professionalism and trust when emails come from a custom domain instead of the retail @gmail, @yahoo, or @outlook ones.
Most of these providers also have the infrastructure to power your custom domain email services. In addition to the usual Apple, Google, and Microsoft, a few other well-known and powerful providers are Migadu, Proton and Fastmail.
Email is the dependable system that everyone relies on, and nobody owns.