I believe it's easier to pay a few quid a month and have a commercial web host handling everything - DNS, email and web. I can't see that you're doing anything fancy or have any need to switch hosts faster than a locomotive so I don't see the need for third-party DNS.
I do recommend to set Gmail to collect from a basic mailbox rather than have the data forwarded through the interwebs a second time. The IMAP on Gmail is a godsend; switch language to US if you've not got the option on UK English yet.
(The web dev company I work for resells basic, medium and high-end hosting from a number of suppliers and has set up custom NS in a number of different ways but it's not where we make our money nor what we want to be responsible for.)
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I do recommend to set Gmail to collect from a basic mailbox rather than have the data forwarded through the interwebs a second time. The IMAP on Gmail is a godsend; switch language to US if you've not got the option on UK English yet.
(The web dev company I work for resells basic, medium and high-end hosting from a number of suppliers and has set up custom NS in a number of different ways but it's not where we make our money nor what we want to be responsible for.)