My parents have a domain bought from OVH (they had to move away from their ancient ISP email address) and just use the free email service that goes with it. OVH is big enough that its email servers don't get blocked by the other main providers (it's a different matter if you host your own mail server on OVH servers) and they have not had any delivery problem.
For myself, I run my own mail server and have not had delivery problems for years now (even changing servers, so it's not just a case of IP reputation improving over time).
We do sometimes have delivery problems at work (also running our own mail servers, hosted at Scaleway) but it's to be expected at the kind of volume we have, it stays within quite acceptable levels.
Comments
You don't have to run your own server.
My parents have a domain bought from OVH (they had to move away from their ancient ISP email address) and just use the free email service that goes with it. OVH is big enough that its email servers don't get blocked by the other main providers (it's a different matter if you host your own mail server on OVH servers) and they have not had any delivery problem.
For myself, I run my own mail server and have not had delivery problems for years now (even changing servers, so it's not just a case of IP reputation improving over time).
We do sometimes have delivery problems at work (also running our own mail servers, hosted at Scaleway) but it's to be expected at the kind of volume we have, it stays within quite acceptable levels.