You won’t be hosting your email addresses through Wild Apricot if you choose to use WA as your primary web site. This is not about email that goes through the Wild Apricot system, but about email that does not – all the email addresses assigned to your domain, for example.
For most larger associations that will not present an issue as there is likely to already be an MX record set up for your domain to push email to a different mailserver location. For smaller associations, this may mean setting up email to run through your domain registrar or another email provider.
We generally recommend Gmail for associations that are not sure of where they want to host their email services, but whatever the case, you should look carefully at what is offered. You very well could want mailboxes AND forwarding – make sure your provider offers both.
Although email runs through a domain name, you should look at the web site and the email server as separate components of the domain. They may be managed in the same server company, but more and more that is not the case.