Yeah Google's going to cost some $$. There are cheaper options out there for just email hosting.
https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/email/
https://www.rackspace.com/email-hosting/webmail/pricing
What I do is I have a few different email addresses (one from my ISP, a business one, a personal one, a few other business ones I've accumulated over the years), and I forward them all into my Gmail email address. I've set them up so I can send from them as well, so I only ever have to ever use one email client. Takes a bit of configuring, but it's pretty handy, and I can use Gmail as my mail client regardless of which service is doing my email hosting.