I've self hosted my email forwarding service on my own domain for over a decade, but eventually gave up because of deliverability issues that were out of my control - primarily with Microsoft's email services.
I've switched 3 years ago to a hosted forwarding service forwardemail.net
Pros:
* Allows to switch email providers if needed
* Allows to forward email to multiple providers
* Allows to store backups of emails
* Allows to have emails on multiple domains for different contexts (personal/professional/projects/etc.)
* Allows to have different email addresses per service. If you get spam on that email address you can just stop forwarding emails for it.
* Allows to have reliable mail rules based on the email address
* Allows also to send emails from multiple addressses
* Most spam is filtered before it reaches the inbox
* Open source
* Would be easy to switch to a different email forwarding service if needed (or self host it).
* Excellent track record over 8+ years
Cons:
* They have the potential to snoop on your emails. Any service that's really important would have 2FA enabled, so I accept the risk.
* They have the potential to send emails on your behalf - again, they've earned my trust, so I accept the risk for that.
* Add another point possible failure. So far I haven't noticed any issues with it.
* There's greylisting that delays emails for 5 minutes if they are not on the whitelist, which affects some of less common sending services.
* In very rare cases, some services ban registering with a forwarding email addresses.
* You need to make sure you don't lose your domain. I renew it 5 years before expiry with a reputable domain registrar (NameCheap).
Outlook/Hotmail is the only service that's blocking my emails.
I've been with DigitalOcean for 10 years. Beforehand it was just a matter of filling a form and waiting 24 hours to get the IP whitelisted. A few years ago, Microsoft started refusing whitelisting IPs.
DigitalOcean on the other hand started blocking SMTP by default for new customers since June/2022 [1], and thus significantly reduced the amount of spam coming out of their network. That said, they're still not doing enough to stop spam from their network, and they're still a source of spam [2].
I can cryptographically prove the identity of the server (and thus its reputation), and there's no justified reason to block mails based only on the network's IP address, while ignoring all the other factors.
Outlook/Hotmail blocks DigitalOcean. After half a dozens attempts over the years to delist my IP, and following all the best practices (dedicated fixed IP, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, FCrDNS, zero spam, TLS, etc.) I gave up.
Eventually, most people realize that their Outlook/Hotmail email service is defective because they're not receiving emails, and they migrate to another email service.
* Video [2]
1. https://x.com/lauriewired/status/2041566601426956391 (https://xcancel.com/lauriewired/status/2041566601426956391)
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKbgulTp3FE