Autoreply for Distribution lists "Thanks for your..."

[Cloud-Pia]

I'm a certified Exchange admin but only because it was necessary for some SharePoint certification. I know enough to be very dangerous and sometimes I get these "can you fix.." which in my mind should be super easy to do. 

Like adding a simple autoreply to a distribution list. And before you go all "you should create a shared mailbox/team/die" for using old school tech. I know. I know all that, but some customers are slowly moving to the cloud and some things don't need new tech. 

Case, a cv@company... which is used for sending in resumés. The auto reply should then be "thanks for your application, someone will soon be in touch. Read more about how we handle personal information -link-. Have a great day"

When I goo.. sorry, binged it, I found this Setting an autoreply for a distribution group in Exchange (codetwo.com) which I find to be totally unrealistic for something as so easy as a knee jerk reaction. It's a trigger for anything sent to this mailbox. I understand that this could potentially be spamming but then timebox it to only send out max X e-mails per 10 minutes.

Why is there not an easier way to do this? I mean, the use has been around for a while.

[#2]

Distribution lists are basically a collection of email addresses, there is no underlying mailbox object on which you can configure the autoreply (either via an Inbox rule or leveraging the OOO functionality). Thus the workarounds you've discovered already - adding a shared mailbox and configuring an OOO therein being the simplest one.
You should consider using a Microsoft 365 Group instead - it offers the DL aspect while at the same time you can configure an OOO reply for it (as Groups do have an underlying mailbox object).

[#3]

Yeah. Did you read what I wrote? You directly went to the "you should" as I asked not for. I know this.
And I don't want anything more then the receipt functionality. It could be a trigger on the e-mail just as spam/protection bla bla bla that we have on other things that are not a mailbox but an e-mail address. Like the bounce information that goes out when someone tries to send an e-mail to an address that does not exist.

[#4]

Yeah. Did you read what Vasil said? The world is not ideal. Or follow his reasonable suggestion or do nothing and live with it.