What is cheapest way to just receive (not send) email to a domain I own?
No $12 a month, I want 0 if possible. I just need to be able to use it as "work email" to sign up for stuff and get the code sent.
The cheapest assuming your ISP allows port 25 inbound and you are not behind CG-NAT, then opening port 25 on your home router and forwarding it to a machine running postfix or a mail server of your choice would be the cheapest.
Most ISP's block outbound port 25 now, but many still allow 25 inbound which works fine for receiving email as per your requirements assuming you can DNAT port 25.
If your home IP is not static then you can use dynamic DNS to update the IP for your home. Use a Dynamic DNS client to update "somename" whatever name you choose for your home IP. This assumes your DNS provider supports dynamic DNS or has an API that works with a dynamic DNS client. You will not likely be able to update the PTR record but this is fine as FRrDNS is not required for receiving emails.
somename 1h in a your.home.ip.address
@ 1d in mx somename.yourdomain.tld.
Is it possible to "own" a domain. In the past, one had to keep paying ICANN and a registrar every month/year or else the domain would be rented/leased to someone else, often the registrar itself.
I use a $5 VPS and a couple of Python scripts, one for SMTP and one for POP3. I use the latter with GMail so it can collect the mails. But before I wrote that POP3 server I would just log in and cat the files the SMTP server wrote for each inbound email.
Cloudflare has free email routing.
Do you have anything running on the domain? Like if you have a webhost already, that changes the answer
Cheapest option is to have a self-hosting friend like me and I just create a login for you on my email server and you point the MX records there
I have been using Gandi for this, even with their pricing change, email aliases (just for receiving email, to any other email address (e.g. gmail)) are still free. I use them extensively.
Surprising that no one said this but receiving email is as easy as setting up mail forwarding in the DNS records with the domain registrar. Just Google how to do it with your registrar and you are set. Shouldn’t have any cost at all.
zoho.com gives 5 emails for free FOREVER. setup the mx records and that's set.
Cloudflare sell domain registration "at cost", and offer free Email Routing. So that's quite possibly as cheap as it gets in the long term.
iCloud+ is $0.99/month and you have the possibility to setup custom email domains. I setup my custom email domain (the domain is hosted on Gandi) like a month ago, it was straightforward. Also, the "hide my email" feature is handy.
Cloudflare's service works well for this