I only wish Gmail gave me the option to do this.
That's why I pay Fastmail: no ads, and no data harvesting.
It is a good time to have a commercial relationship with an email service. Less likely for politics to get involved.
https://workspace.google.com/individual/
Not sure if it's fully launched yet.
Google workspace individual seems like a different thing. Kinda confusing to be honest.
I did, and when Gmail turned off my billing (for my own protection), I lost the ability to send and receive emails, because I was exceeding my drive quota by 1,200%.
I have to send them a passport photo (my ID is expired) and hope that they bless me with the ability to pay for additional storage again. But I realized it’s safer not to pay for anything.
You do need a domain for Business Starter, but that cost would be less than the savings over the Individual plan.
Individual is a "normal" Google account and doesn't increase your storage from the default 15GB or support custom domains. But if you stop paying you still have a valid @gmail account and just lose access to the additional features.
"Business Starter" uses your own domain..."Custom email with your domain". So, yes, you would need to export the emails, but you retain your email address.