> Although being a paid product didn't stop Apple from killing it.

?

Email to [email protected] is still working as far as I know, and I send emails to a couple of people who still use mac.com addresses all the time ([email protected] also works).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201771

This was the .Mac subscription. Poking around the history, it looks like I misunderstood Apple's move at the time. When they discontinued .Mac they also seem to have switched to the me.com domain. My impression at the time from whatever messaging they sent out to subscribers was "no more mac.com email" so that's when I switched to Gmail.

Also @me.com. Apple have some sick domains!

I don't mind paying for e-mail personally. There's a lot of odds and ends stuff you have to deal with operationally if you self-host, and most of the places that charge you don't display ads.