The well connected effort is called economics (specifically an anticipated recession and the end of zero interest rate “free money”)
I'd say correlated but not connected. Most companies rode the wave of rosy growth predictions for years; the last few years suggest that the world is having some tough times and money is not going to magically fall from the sky so companies are shifting towards good revenue numbers instead of good growth numbers. Enough are going the same way that it feels coordinated even if the decisions are being made independently.
Really sucks, a bunch of individually-manageable tedious problems coming along at once feels like an avalanche.
on #5 - you can certainly move your DNS zones to a proper registry/DNS service company for between around $0 and $10-$20 (for all 6) a year. This will let you have complete control of MX and all other records, and you can still use whatever site hosting providers you like. i feel like the cost of a standalone DNS service small negligible compared to the name fee itself and it's an easy and beneficial one to unbundle from everything else.
as to the rest - just because you are right about it doesn't make you not paranoid
"Just because you are not paranoid it does not mean they are not after you"
:-)
Not sure about most of that, but try Dreamhost.
> CardDAV server support has effectively been deprecated, making it difficult to synchronize contacts. My new hosting provider doesn't seem to host CardDAV
Have you considered a notebook?
>In general, I've been maintaining a few WordPress-native sites since about 2018
Wordpress has a lot of vulns and needs updated reguarly, have you considered using a static site? there are frameworks that generate stativc sites
>I had had an email list, but apparently sending via SMTP is no longer natively run through the CRM anymore without a paid service or self-hosting?
How did you have an email list if you only have about five people coming to you a day?
>I'm not presently getting paid to do what I love (i.e., not paid to do tech work), so I'd like some perspective.
I don't love tech, I chanced down a very weird path due to being the sysadmin to abusive parents who eventually developed cognitive issues because they spike their glucose like a football.
it sounds like you use a lot of resources and want to pay the bare minimum, but aren't exactly a thought leader -- is there something you bring to the table you aren't mentioning, like being an underground comedian, a poet, an "influences" in that more organic way?
if not, it might be less about walled gardens and more about you're not good for business - you use a lot, pay a little, and don't have the connections to justify it.
(just my two cents, as i do my morning email and restrain the urge to curse out loud at the browser warnings one gets when you try to do everything over onionland and your enemies want to track you across the web)
That's why I don't like cheap services and cheap products like WP.
You don't tell anything special. All these things are typical underdog experience, happen periodically when use very strict economy.
Mathematics model is very similar to oversell of air tickets. Idea, that constantly, few humans late to plane or don't fly for some reason, so companies sell more tickets than seats. Sometimes all people meet inside plane and see oversell.
Some things may become slightly better if you just switch to other cheap hoster (this is like recalculate sharding). But if you will switch to significantly more expensive price (better also change hoster) you will see very different world.
Or you could just wait, and when happen next economy grow, some things will resolve themselves.