I tried using Hotmail as my primary for a while a few years ago and I've never seen more legitimate mail being entirely dropped with no explanation. It would never reach the inbox, it wouldn't be in the junk folder, it was as if the other party had never even sent it, despite assuring me they had. Never had that happen with Gmail or really any other mail service out there.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have serious issue with Fastmail’s spam filtering. Meaning, it seems that I am the spam filter. I find myself considering closing the account on a regular basis because of it.

I am also extremely frustrated with Gmail’s AI features now being apparently impossible to disable.

Have you considered using AWS WorkMail? Very easy to set up, even helps you with MX/DKIM/DMARC/SPF if you use Route53, and only $4/month/user I believe. Granted, you won't get anywhere near Google's level of automatic credibility, but even that is relatively low for young gmail accounts.

Seconding Fastmail here.

Microsoft is an insane choice, just look at what they've done with Windows and their Office suite.

Pretty much lost me at that point.

Yeah I laughed when I saw he'd moved to MS, but I'd love to get some more alternatives.

My ISP has already said they're going to stop providing email service at some point in the near future and I'll have to migrate at some point. In the past I'd picked up a cheap domain and self-hosted for a bit, but I'd love to not have to. Any good email providers out there that actually respect their customers and support IMAP?

"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..."

Please tell me this is parody.