Thinking of starting media creation, want to have an email address dedicated to that purpose. Don't want to go with Gmail as I'd like to phase Google out of my life, amd Protonmail seems incorrect for this because it largely wouldn't be encrypted mail.
https://purelymail.com/ seems like it's a cheap, no-nonsense email provider. I'm already setup on Migadu and happy enough, so I haven't tried it. But it seems like a lot of people like it.
The advantage of this approach is that you are not tied to a service provider indefinitely. You can keep the same email address when you change providers.
The stakes of selecting a "wrong" service provider aren't as high. If you find you chose the "wrong" one, you can change it in the future.
Your domain provider might have a basic service for low cost.
You can get a low tier google workspace.
Zoho exists.
You can get an exchange p1 license.
You can buy your own Synology and run an email server off it if your ISP allows.
I use google workspace but it’s from when they had a free service. If I needed to switch today I’d go with Exchange online, or I’d find a cheap Colo near me and put a Synology pair in it.