I more or less disagree with two points this article makes.
You don't have to go with a major mail hosting service to prevent deliverability issues. Any one of the hundreds of thousands of small local hosting providers should do. I've been with two tiny, local, "boutique" hosters for over 20 years and never noticed any issues. I also have it on good authority that entirely self-hosted e-mail is not as tricky as some like to claim. Set up your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly, and obviously don't send any spam or be an open relay, and even Google and Microsoft should have no worries doing business with you. Heck, if abuse scores were that important, Google and Microsoft would be the first hosts anyone would ban.
Also, catch-all is a terrible idea. I used to do it in the mid-2000s. Think about your current spam levels and multiply it by a thousand when every spammer can try jack@, john@, joe@, etc., and everything is delivered. Add to that all the spammers that use something@your-domain as a fake sender, so you get all the non-delivery reports. Ugh.
I used to do this to track leaks and non-consensual passing on of my address (the old registering at Company X with company-x@). This worked a few times, but after a few years I noticed that the amount of breaches and leaks soon make it useless. At this point, according to HaveIBeenPwned, most of the addresses I ever used have been in 20+ leaks each. It just not worth the effort anymore.
You don't have to go with a major mail hosting service to prevent deliverability issues. Any one of the hundreds of thousands of small local hosting providers should do. I've been with two tiny, local, "boutique" hosters for over 20 years and never noticed any issues. I also have it on good authority that entirely self-hosted e-mail is not as tricky as some like to claim. Set up your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly, and obviously don't send any spam or be an open relay, and even Google and Microsoft should have no worries doing business with you. Heck, if abuse scores were that important, Google and Microsoft would be the first hosts anyone would ban.
Also, catch-all is a terrible idea. I used to do it in the mid-2000s. Think about your current spam levels and multiply it by a thousand when every spammer can try jack@, john@, joe@, etc., and everything is delivered. Add to that all the spammers that use something@your-domain as a fake sender, so you get all the non-delivery reports. Ugh.
I used to do this to track leaks and non-consensual passing on of my address (the old registering at Company X with company-x@). This worked a few times, but after a few years I noticed that the amount of breaches and leaks soon make it useless. At this point, according to HaveIBeenPwned, most of the addresses I ever used have been in 20+ leaks each. It just not worth the effort anymore.