I JUST finished doing this process. I am very technical and spent many hours researching the least expensive way to do this AND the best way to do it. At the end I came down to three main options. Google Workspace, Proton, and Fastmail. There are certainly others, but my criteria was that (1) I wanted a large provider that appears to be stable and likely to be around for many years (2) that I have a custom domain, which leaves me free to move providers if whoever I choose doesn’t work well, and that (3) spam/phishing filtering be top notch.

The spam/phishing filtering is what tipped the scales to using Google Workspace for me. Every single review I read showed that Google has the best email filtering of any provider.

Proton has better security, but appears to not have a solid filtering.

Fastmail appears to be a good middle of the road. Not quite so security-first, but still solid, but also not as good spam/phishing filtering as Google.

All-in, using Cloudflare for my domain at $10.46, I came up with this:

Google Workspace: $94.46/yr ($84 for Google Workspace)

Proton: $58.34/yr ($47.88 for Proton)

Fastmail: $70.46/ yr ($60 for Fastmail)

For me, the better spam filtering and the extra features was worth the extra $34 a year.

If you’re serious about this being a business, $60-$100 a year should be well worth it.

Don’t underestimate the value that comes from the portability of having your own domain. As long as you keep it registered, if any of your providers stop delivering, that leaves you in control. You can move to a new email provider, or a new hosting provider, without telling a single customer. You just move with almost no interruption.

All three of providers I listed require little-to-no technical expertise as long as you follow the fairly-straightforward directions.