To me email is one of the most worthwhile services to pay for—it is the backbone of your digital identity after all.

That being said, there’s probably not much need to pay more than $5/mo. I’m very happy with Fastmail at $60/yr.

I personally pay 10$ a month for GSuite basically to handle the mail of my personal domain name. Is it worth it? I'm not sure yet but I had way to much issues with email not delivered in the past (blacklisted IP ranges, reputation, etc.) when I had my own mail server.

I prefer paying 10$ a month and forget about mail server issues and wondering if my mail is going to the spam folder..

For a mail relay service, I'd probably pay $24-$36/yr. I happily pay Proton $50/yr for quality email service. $12/yr would be a no-brainer.