Back in the day, I co-founded a company that offered vanity e-mail addresses of the form firstname@lastname.some-tld. It eventually morphed into the .name registry. But what we did not realise, apart from misjudging demand, was how confused people get over this.
Even now, while I have my lastname.com that pre-dates that business by several years, I still have to spell out my e-mail address, often several times, to people who know my name. Trying to short-circuiting that process with "it's just my firstname at my lastname dot com" rarely works, and often ends up with them asking if is at gmail.com or something. So I dutifully spell it out, and many people noticeably don't make the connection between the domain name and my lastname even after they've written it down.
I've found that "My firstname dot my lastname at gmail" works great over the phone. I don't even have to say dot com everyone understands "gmail."
It's a good email address, custom domains for email addresses are somewhat rare and often end up being more confusing than helpful. Unless it is support at domain dot com or info at domain dot com.
Not for personal addresses facing the general public though, I wouldn't think. Even something as simple as "My firstname at domain dot com" you'll end up spelling out the domain one time out of two whether you've been talking about it - or not.
There is an advantage to using firstname@lastname.com and that is if google decides to block your gmail account you aren't completely screwed. You can simply change the MX record for your domain, point it at a different service provider and continue getting the email sent to you.
True, but besides the point. The problem is users are conditioned to think that personal addresses don't exist beyond the big e-mail providers. "Not GMail or Yahoo? You, sir, are a liar, such e-mail address can not possibly exist!" (that is an exaggerated version of what I get with firstname@lastname.com: "so, firstname.lastname@gmail.com?" "no, firstname, at, lastname, dot, com." "so, firstname, dot, lastname, dot, com, at, gmail, dot, com?" ...)
I have my personal email on a subdomain.org.uk address, and this has occasionally caused problems with people leaving off the '.uk'.
On the other hand, almost everyone I want to give my email address to over the phone will just use it for marketing, so I give them a gmail one and let the NSA index my spam.
Even now, while I have my lastname.com that pre-dates that business by several years, I still have to spell out my e-mail address, often several times, to people who know my name. Trying to short-circuiting that process with "it's just my firstname at my lastname dot com" rarely works, and often ends up with them asking if is at gmail.com or something. So I dutifully spell it out, and many people noticeably don't make the connection between the domain name and my lastname even after they've written it down.
Familiarity is often far simpler.