Ideally, one would use [email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected] but then the identity [email protected] isn't masked.

If you prefer email forwarding, then: Cloudflare announced a free email-forwarding service just yesterday [0]. Not sure if they provide unlimited email forwarding rules. Other domain registrars like domains.google and namecheap.com also support email forwarding at no-cost.

If you prefer a managed mailbox, then: Zoho Mail, Fresh Mail, AWS WorkMail et al are nice if you'd also like to send emails using the address you sign up with.

Other than that, if you're technically inclined, then have SES plonk incoming emails in to S3 [1]

Be careful registering domain.tld without whois shield and/or with TLDs that require registrant to publicly reveal ownership (like .in)

See also: simplelogin.io and anonaddy.com

[0] https://archive.is/BEKi7

[1] https://archive.is/2iQCN

I use fastmail for this. It works great although my email address sometimes confuses people. For example, a small company I ordered something online from called me to ask why their business name is in my email address. I have 2 separate domains going to the same inbox, each domain can have any subdomain and email address I want. I can send emails from any of those addresses as well.

You can add a rot13 transformation on the company name (if there is a human on the other end), to be less confusing for them.

https://rot13.com/

Nice tip. I've encountered the same thing. Love to see an email generator using this automated in bitwarden/keepass.

I'm extremely happy with mxroute, pricing is great and support is quick. I even host the email of two small companies there.

Many registrars offer catch-all forwarding (to your free personal email), which would be your best bet if you don't expect to need to send email.

If you can afford $6/mo, Google Workspace isn't bad, there's generally better security and it grants you a lot of control over your account's settings (and will remove ads from the Gmail app on your phone, even when only looking at your @gmail account inbox).

Otherwize, Zoho works, but now costs $12/user/year (it used to be free) so ymmv. Great if you were planning on pure POP/IMAP usage anyways.

Wait, the Gmail app on phones has ads?

Yes, it's unfortunate. I had forgotten about it since I've had a GSuite locally for a while but I see them when someone else opens their app.

https://www.queryclick.com/app/uploads/2015/10/Gmail-ads-101...

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7019460?hl=en

Ah, I guess they're only for the Promotions and Social inbox categories, and I have inbox categories disabled.

If I saw an ad in my email client, my immediate action would be to find a new email client.

I can strongly recommend 33Mail for this. I've used it for years with zero hiccups. $1/month allows you to connect a custom domain. https://33mail.com/