Thank you! Great answer!

For some reason, perhaps because I’m an absolute shill/sucker for free services, I always forget about mailbox.org. Thank you for bringing it to my attention and talking about its features!

Though, if I understand correctly, we basically don’t have a privacy-respecting email provider that offers auto-forward and auto-reply functionality in its free plan/tier:

• Proton Mail requires a paid plan for auto-forwarding/replying and its free plan doesn’t support IMAP. BUT?!, crucially, IIUC, the issue can already be circumvented with a custom domain that sits in front of Proton Mail. Which, isn’t entirely free, but 1$ for the domain ain’t bad.
• Tuta Mail doesn’t even offer the functionality AFAIK nor does it support IMAP. Furthermore, I don’t know if the custom domain trick works for this one.
• Finally, mailbox.org doesn’t even have a free plan. Though, at 1 euro/month, it’s at least very competitively priced.

This is pretty cool and definitely has use, but IIUC this is strictly a free forwarding address, right? I don’t think it tries to compete with Proton Mail or Tuta Mail.

Thank you for raising this point.

Are there even other privacy-respecting email providers that are fit for the job? I’m genuinely curious.

EDIT: I absolute hate doing this, but I want to understand: Why is this getting downvoted?