Even the cheap budget registrars offer email forwarding for free and I have never had any trouble.
This gives you the benefits of free Gmail without handing your entire life over to them. At least with a tld there is some due process and rules to protect you.
So I have tons of people who would essentially seem my contact as a black hole if I abandoned my gmail address at this point, because Google seems to have deliberately crafted their clients to prefer the gmail address rather than the “real” address. Essentially treating the gmail address as if it’s a reply-to.
I don't use gmail for anything else except throwaway accounts. Who wants to run an SMTP server.
You can however send email to google's SMTP server, using an ordinary gmail account [3]. This is how email clients (Eudora, Apple Mail, sendmail) work. The only trick is that they force it to be authenticated and encrypted.
I believe (but have not verified recently) that if you send an email with an email address/domain other than of the authorising account, it will be delivered, even lacking all SPF etc. But, it will block for anything above small quantities of mail, and unless you set up DMARC for your domain, it will still get dropped or marked as spam. [4]
Running an SMTP server for yourself is actually fairly simple (okay, assuming a deep background in linux, but very educational). The real drama is DNS/DMARC/SPF/DKIM and users ruining your reputation.
[1] https://www.datto.com/resource-downloads/SettingUpExternalMa... [2] https://support.google.com/a/answer/178333?hl=en [3] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-... [4] https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/free-smtp-server/
Sending from Google's servers using my address would cause SPF and DMARC failures, so if you want to do that then they'd have to make sure it's clear that the mail is actually from gmail.
The problem is that from gmail's point of view your registrar is now sending it a lot of spam. So it'll block the registrar or filter it more aggressively.
Also if you get email from a 3rd party who uses domain-keys, spf, etc (eg just about everyone) then those emails will be failing all the checks when gmail receives them.
I have namecheap forward all of my email from *@my-domain-name.com to my.name@gmail.com. Works no problem, has for several years. Prepared for the eventual switch to FastMail when they support multi-label messages.
The only messages that end up in my spam folder are spam for knock off online pharmacies.
Okay, it appears this is so common that gmail has some guidelines that if people follow they are are usually okay:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/175365?hl=en
It does look like namecheap filters spam aggressively so possibly that helps.
In general be careful for the reasons I mention. But it looks like if you follow the guidelines with gmail then you'll be good.
Sorry for the inaccurate information.
edit: I shouldn't be oblique in my comments. I'm of course referring to the whole Daily Stormer fiasco.
Most serve at the pleasure of a formal contract with their TLD control entity (e.g. ICANN).
Ultimately, if you were to sue them, there's a root document of legal responsibilities and behavior to point to.
In contrast to whatever emphemeral TOS bullshit Google feels like tossing out. And furthermore, unlike Google, they can't really just ignore you.
Or, to put it another way, VISA, American Airlines, Coke, etc also have an interest in maintaining legal ownership of domains. They could care less about Google accounts.
But actually if you were to sue them, wouldn't the case be dismissed for lack of standing? If you're not a party to the dispute you can't sue (or rather, you can't sue and actually have your case proceed). You'd probably need to convince ICANN that they need to sue, which is already a much trickier position.