This is one of the reasons I switched to a different provider using a custom domain. I can make new addresses in any format I want. There's zero risk of a spammer stripping them down to a base address for the primary account. They also don't get rejected by broken validators.
What’s your plan for when you no longer own your custom domain (think bus factor)? Someone else register your domain and now has access to all your accounts.
Everyone has their own risk profiles, mine assumes I retain control over my domains and emails. I prepay for them several months in advance to make sure I don't lose ownership. any service provider worth their salt will have a human factor for customer support who can help you if any such issues show up.
Thank you for expanding. Sure you can prepay up to a certain extent. Eventually your domain will be available to others for purchase and therefore your accounts will become vulnerable. Maybe this isn’t an issue if in the worst situation you’re not around but if this could cause chaos for your friends and family I would suggest taking it into account.
Given that domain renewals can be purchased multiple years into the future, along with the fact that there are grace periods after expiration, it would take an awful lot of failure to lose a domain unintentionally. I've held my primary domain since 1997 multiple registrars and numerous hosting / colocation arrangements over the years. It sounds harder than it is if you haven't done it before.
yep, i use fastmail with a custom domain. i have a catch all email set up, so i just register any account on sitename.com as "sitename@mydomain" and it all gets sorted into a catch all folder. I can then run rules if i want it to go into a certain category like "bills" or just straight to the garbage.
Not sure about normalizing recipients' emails but some are definitely aware of it because I've seen spam that asked to "reply back to defi.n.it.ely.not.shady+email@gmail.com" or something.
