> > I didn't want to actually host my own mail stack > > Is there a way to only host the receive portion? > > I'm happy to pay someone to handle all the idiocy around sending email and getting it through Google and Microsoft, but I'd really like to hold my emails myself.

Sure. Set your MX to your own SMTP server but pay a mail delivery service to send your emails & use their SMTP servers as your outgoing server. You'll have to setup SPF & DKIM appropriately of course.

It's not trivial to do this, but it should be possible.

> Set your MX to your own SMTP server but pay a mail delivery service to send your emails

Is there a paid mail delivery service that doesn't get marked as spam instantaneously?

Or is there a way to do this through something like Fastmail?

FWIW I've been using a personal domain hosted at Dreamhost and their mail server for many years and have not had any issues with sending mail from my domain.

If you have your own domain, you can do whatever you want (including splitting sending and receiving).

> Is there a way to only host the receive portion?

Sure. Set up your email server and have DNS of your domain point the MX record at it so you receive all email directly without any third party involvement. Then, set up outgoing email to forward to some third party which handles delivery for you. IIRC there are some free options even, if your outgoing volume is low.

That said, my email server handles incoming and outgoing email for a handful of domains for self and family, no problem.

You could use a desktop e-mail client like Thunderbird and include its data in your backups and maybe occasionally export it somewhere in a standard exchange format for e-mail folders. You can even re-upload such local data to another e-email provider if you switch.

All of that seems easier than setting up a server to keep your e-mails.

I use AWS SES. You pay 0.01 cent per e-mail.

Two email addrs, with your TX email having a Reply-To header pointing to the RX one?

No, that will get marked as spam super fast.

That has not been my experience, but one data point is not statistical data