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I've been rethinking the "long-term" thing and wondering if maybe "free" email providers, provided you choose the right one, might be longer lasting than many/most of the paid ones. For example, I can't imagine Gmail disappearing overnight. Another factor is when you pay a provider you obviously have to keep paying or else they will cut you off, whereas Gmail gives you at least 9 months of no activity before they shut down your account. You only need to arrange some POP or IMAP activity to keep it open indefinitely. It doesn't take much activity or effort to keep free email accounts open. I imagine most of us have various odd free accounts we've set up over the years that just keep working away with minimal use. Domain email is often touted on here (by me too) as a way of having control over your own email address for the long-term, but again you have to keep paying or your domain can go away. Size matters a lot too. Go for a giant provider if you want longevity. Some smaller shops only have a handful of employees, and sometimes only one or two. If a key person leaves your email service might end overnight. The true giants have multiple scattered data centers, huge teams of security people, and all sorts of redundancy. Something like a DoS attack can take down even medium-sized and larger companies, while one of the giants can usually keep chugging along. We saw what happened to Fastmail a few years back. Having worked in cs a lot I know that even with large companies the fallback communication tool is often a personal Gmail address when everything else is down, and I see that even executives at these companies often use a free email service for important communications.
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