Meta-comment: Your post isn't unreasonable, but it seems your throwaway name killed it for you...

"isn't unreasonable" but it's a profoundly selfish sentiment. It's almost a given that the people reading this are totally immune to this. We all use adblockers as the default.

Zoho Mail + Personal Domain = Free, No Ads. Company makes money by providing good-enough email product, encouraging you to use their other for-money good-enough SaaS products.

"gonna just register my own domain and set up a server somewhere"

..... only to find that you have problems delivering email to Gmail users, who are everywhere. :/

I experienced this same problem when moving to a new hosting provider and IP set. couldn't sent mail to Google properties/hosted accounts until my IP's email reputation score was high enough to be approved by whatever lurks in Google.

Everyone's talking about switching emails, but realistically how difficult do you think it will be. Changing it for all the services you use and informing everyone? Or are you just planning on setting up forwarding for a while... (Asking because I'm trying to make the switch myself)

I switched to Fastmail about 2 weeks ago and their POP retrieval feature made it really easy to get all emails from from my old account. I just updated my email address with a service when first using it after making the switch. And I reply to emails from my new address.

I was looking into ProtonMail and Riseup as well. There are lots of good alternatives to Gmail.

I've switched to Fastmail and still have my gmail address. It's just another folder and it get's fetched via IMAP. I also added the mail as an identity, so I can still answer to people with my gmail adress.

So no need to inform everyone, just use your new address when you're asked.