I ended up with an Icelandic domain name at one point, let’s just say, I still don’t speak Icelandic, but Google translate sufficed for deciphering the registration emails!
I do have my own domain name for my emails, and I have some old email addresses forward to my domain, but I don’t necessarily suggest it for friends or family, just because it can be a bit of a pain from time to time.
Having your own domain, if you are a business is essential in my view. @gmail looks really amateurish and even suspicious frankly. Otherwise I don’t think it matters much?
Absolutley, In my view a business with no domain name of its own, a gmail address and only a FB prescence is one I would avoid. Some small businesses are, I know, good but low tech or unaware. I do know one, but in general, no. I don’t think I am unusual in that though @tomalmy disagrees obviously. I avoid any business that works mainly from Facebook if I possibly can as a matter of fact. On principle. I actually don’t go on Facebook at all now for any reason, I deleted my LinkedIn account and Twitter a year or so ago too.
Now I’m curious what the Icelandic domain is and – if it doesn’t turn out to be self-explanatory – why you got it.
Iceland is .is
If it’s somebody who is clearly a small crafter or something I’m fine with Facebook only. But if they’re trying to pass themselves off as a legit full-time business and they don’t have a website, an email, or anything like that, then yeah - total loss of credibility for me. 
I own luo.ma which is very nice for giving out my email address over the phone, and for times when I want to look extremely nerdy.
The .ma TLD is… I think, Morocco? Fortunately their emails arrive in French and English, and their website is also available in English.
Unfortunately what started out as a premium of $35/year is now $50/year. Turns out vanity is expensive. Who knew?
I’ve started using my tjluoma.com domain for more things with the eye towards “If they keep raising the price, some year it might be out of my price range”. Fortunately, other than my email addresses, I don’t use the domain for anything other than my own link shortener (and luo.ma itself redirects to http://RhymesWithDiploma.com)
But I still really like having the domain, and people are starting to get more used to the idea that not every email address has to end in .com. I used to have many more and longer conversations where I would have to explain that, yes, the entire right side of the email address is just L-U-O (DOT) M-A 
I’m pretty sure I broke the brain of at least one receptionist who was sure I was too dumb to understand how email addresses work.
A small crafter won’t lose credibility with me, but they will lose business. While I guess there are a few people out there still who “don’t use the internet” they’d be a lot rarer than the “don’t use Facebook” crowd, of which I am one of a growing number.
For a while I was using name@surname.email as an email address. I abandoned it after discovering quite a few websites have very old fashioned validation rules when they make you enter your email address. Some seemed only to accept the original TLDs plus countries, some made other assumptions I couldn’t figure out. The nail in the coffin was my own ISP who on the main login page would disallow it, but showed a separate error page which itself had a login field that did accept it. I got tired of always entering a bogus address and password on the main page just to get to the error page.
A little out of topic (email), but it is interesting that currently .er is unavailable for registration, and the domains under .er are “fairly tightly controlled”.
Other trivial facts about domain is that .io is actually official domain of British Indian Ocean Territory, but the popular meaning slowly shifts to “input/output” (source, and where to purchase).
It’s seems like you have already made up your mind but here is what I do. I’ve been using custom domain(s) for the last 25-30 years, I’ve tried using gmail as a backend (I don’t use a web client) but there was nothing there that was an improvement for me - on the contrary. Anyway, I have always had a hosting plan with an ISP where email is a part of the package so there is no extra cost (unlimited number of email addresses for unlimited number of domains). This has worked well for me and it have also allowed me to move to a new ISP without problem, archive emails, etc. I actually lost emails when I tried moving things to/from gmail so I keep my distance (+ privacy is a huge issue for me).
So having a personal domain have been a non-issue to me, in fact it has been hugely beneficial.
As for changing email address, this is a long term project. If you want to keep in contact with people, and not just delete the old account, you should plan to do this over the next 5 years or so. People will email you on the old address and you have to answer from the new one, after a few years most people will be using the new email address (they will use whatever address that your name as suggested by their email program, so what you’re really doing is convincing the software that it should be using the new address).
I did such a change, after 15 years or so I wanted to move my main email account to another domain and it probably took somewhere between 5 and 10 years before people stopped using the old address.
I have thought a lot about this. probably more than one should considering its just email. I do find it somewhat amusing how much thinking goes into something as boring as email. I include myself in this too.
I have decided, that I am not being precious. I will continue using my domain. The difference being, I will move back to my Google GSUITE Legacy account where its free. So what if the rest of my family is not using the custom domain. I enjoy it and I like giving my firstname@surname.TLD .
In the future, if my family wants to use it, its there waiting for them.
I will however, try to limit the amount fo domains I purchase. So far I have:
www.merecivilian.com
surname.TLD
I share this sentiment that @webwalrus shared. Especially true for ongoing financial obligation which email can be using your own domain. Most of the world is happy to continue using their GMAIL and Outlook accounts. I suppose the difference being, there is a niche that care for things like custom domains for personal use. I guess, I am one of those. For business use, there is no debate. Get your own domain. For personal use, Its not that clear cut.
I thank you all for your views, certainly helped me decide.
I’ve always found email stored an Email Program, far easier to search. I can usually find the email i want in seconds.
Each to his or her own.
No, I agree with you! While I said that it seems like most small businesses just have a Facebook presence these days, I don’t think that’s good. Sadly, there seem to be many places that started with a website, but then felt forced to add Facebook because that’s where all the people are. Now they maintain their Facebook presence but let their websites languish. 
Also these small operations seem to prefer SMS over email.
(And I was overjoyed when MPU left Facebook!)
Its not so much about the @gmail part its the bigdaddy7458 that is unprofessional. Often you cannot get just yourname@gmail.com so you have to get clever and depending on your name you might have to get really off the beaten path. With a custom domain you can just have name@lastname.com or something similiar.
as a former IT Administrator who managed several Exchange servers with outlook on the desktop I am reminded of this pain. It got better each version but those damn PST!!!
Im pretty much in line with your thinking here. With the exception of I try to evaluate the size of the business in how professional they look or don’t look based on their tech presentations. For example if my multi-location garage door company didn’t have sales@biggaragedoors.com that would just seem weird. But if the woodworker at the farmers market only had bobswoodworking@gmail.com that wouldn’t be as weird cause he’s probably not technical and just a solo act.
@glenthompson I think that there’s a frequent confusion between and PST and OST file. A PST file is a local archive, the email in the PST is not on the Exchange server. An OST file is a local cache of email on the Exchange server. For either 500mb is nothing.
In the early 2010s, I had a user with a 55GB Exchange mailbox, he never deleted anything because he was “too busy”, and he was taking up the majority of an Exchange store (which were limited to 75GB) it was only when I educated him about the fact that in the event of a server failure, it would take us about a week to restore his mailbox, and in the interim, he would have no access to his historical email, that he saw the error of his ways and block deleted anything over 10 years old (almost halved the size of his mailbox at a stroke) and was much more careful in future.
That’s the problem with Electronic file stores for non administrators, they don’t see a cost to piling stuff up.
And that’s before we go anywhere near GDPR and the risk of retaining information for too long.
In addition to GDPR there’s the issue of document retention. Keeping older emails may violate your company’s retention policy. Every business (and person) should what documents they need to keep and what they should destroy. Failure to do so could bite you in the event of a lawsuit.
I am just catching up on my backlog of threads. I am really enjoying your blog. Thanks.
As an update, I have settled on an unorthodox email setup which appears to work well for my family. This setup, works with their existing email solution and allows them to use our family custom domain. This means, family members using Gmail and Outlook do not have to change how they use email.
I am using SimpleLogin ($30 a year for the entire family) for this and I have explained in detail here: