Today I purchased Workspace to get an gmail with a custom domain. It works just fine, but workspace is pretty expensive, especially since I’m paying for a bunch of google services that I won’t use.

Previously, I tried email forwarding with cloudfare and it worked great. However, I had one case where Gmail gave a spooky yellow warning to the recipient of an email I’d sent. I can’t afford to have my email seem suspicious or spam since I intend to use this email for work. I’m also sad I can’t set a profile picture when forwarding emails.

Is there a clear and concise way to configure email forwarding such that it complies with every header and all email clients are happy? In the mean time, I’m too paranoid to use it for fear that my emails will be flagged or removed.