That works great if you control your own mail server, but most people don't these days. :)

The reason for this is of course that it's a complete pain to work with the large email providers (say, you want to send an email to gmail) if you have your own service. Email has been far from truly decentralised for a while now.

It's not that bad really. Been doing it since more than a decade.

If you enjoy the administrative work that comes with it (removing yourself from "you exist and you are therefore banned" blocklists, trying to convince gmail/hotmail/etc that you're really a real person, etc) then yes, it's not hard. If you use email, want it to work and don't enjoy extra administrative duties on top of your day job, I'd say it is that bad.

For non-important stuff I can recommend mailhero.

I have also been using mailhero.io since it has first been mentioned on HN.

Lately I do however have issues with mails not being forwarded / blocked at the service. I contacted the developer but as of today no feedback. Obviously this is a free service, which also means that I sadly cant rely on it. I am willing to pay for such a service and will try Maskmail / Othermail, but actually I would prefer an open source solution on an own (micro-)server...