Okay I'm researching tuta now .. I have a 2 year sub already though. Was literally in the process of moving from Gmail. Self hosted is tough for me. I guess this is the new normal. Milkshake duck....
My suggestion is, get yourself a domain with email included (I know a few european providers that I tested personally but I bet most of them include a mail service, even if it isnt advertised in the product page), can be had for as cheap as 6€/year. Test it out see if it's enough and it works with third party email clients that you like.
Then later you can also purchase a dedicated mail service on top (but separately) of your domain, starting from 1€/month usually; the advantage to just the barebone approach is a nicer dedicated web interface, apps, support, etc. But it's optional.
I'm wary instead of these all-in-one hefty and pricy (for personal use) services like Proton, do we really need all this interoperability between a drive storage and email and calendar? I think that's the job of the operating system. Is copy-pasting a link to a different app really that inconvenient?
Hi do you mean domain registrar? I use Bookmyname. OVH also worked for me, my most important features are multiple mail accounts (for family) and unlimited aliases.Then I do everything from Clawsmail and Thunderbird/K9 Mail. And of course KeepassXC to save all the aliases and passwords.
For DNS I have yet to setup a server/VM like pihole, for now I just added a few in the router like Quad9, and a few more local ones.
I haven't decided on a mail setup yet. Letting go of automatic inbox sorting is gonna be a pain, I do not miss tweaking inbox filter rules. Maybe I'll keep Gmail around if just for the garbage.
I feel ya, I kept my gmail account(s) many years before I realised I didn't need to check on them "just in case" anymore lol. What helped at first was using 33mail for all the less important stuff, shopping receipts etc. Even today I create domain aliases only for addresses from which I might send email, most of the rest goes into 33m or addy.io ; They make it super easy to switch mail accounts because they're intermediaries.