If you ever decide to host your own, via VPS or sth consider checking docker-mailserver and watchtower. First takes care of the mail stuff and the second updates your containers frequently so you will not have to manually update to new versions of the container (for security patches etc.).

My father still has a gmail account for all of our last names.

Friends don't let friends self host email.

Easy enough to make it work, but maintaining 100% uptime and 100% deliverability is very difficult.

I use both. I have a self hosted docker compose instance of mailcow, which alerts me when an update is available.

I also use protonmail as well.

Self hosting was a pain in the ass to get working, but I've had no issues with it once up. I tossed it behind a reverse proxy to keep it from directly touching the internet.

I use Google Domains to create custom email addresses on the fly that syphons to my personal Gmail address.

If I subscribe to a service, say Netflix, I just put netflix@mydomain.com and it automagically exists and redirects to my Gmail.