As a side question, are there other free DNS providers besides Cloudflare? Ones that don’t require you to register your domain there.

I liked reading both of your arguments, and I think they have merit on both sides. I’m sorry to see this became hostile, but I think the discussion up go the parent comment was good. I hope next one will stay friendly!

jrnl is a CLI tool worth mentioning when it comes to journaling, but does not cover your listed needs.

Find out if your ISP provides an SMTP smarthost.

Worth noting that in Finland they are also by law required to log metadata of delivered mails.