Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Protonmail. I have over 25 different online accounts/identities (each one for a different topic gaming, movies, music, coding etc.), all Protonmail based.

i currently use tuta. it has a free tier, offers encryption, is open source, gdpr-compliant, and is 100% powered by green energy.

i have used mailbox in the past, which is paid (cheapest tier is ~€12/yr). i can recommend it as well.

Tutanota or disroot.

Not that many people use email much anymore

Where do you live, because I want to go there immediately.

tutanota is pretty good

I'm currently using Migadu. It's $20/year for their cheapest plan. They give you a lot of control over the email service, so it might not be the best if you're a noob. In fact, they require you bring a domain name. But, they let you create unlimited users, aliases, have fancy routing, etc.

https://purelymail.com/ looks interesting too. And is cheaper at $10/year.

If you do decide to get a custom domain, just some tips:

• get something that ends in .net or even better .com because shitty companies with shitty IT departments will block other TLDs (I've had this happen with FedEx and my local garbage company). There is no spam folder for them, the email just explodes.
• probably don't pick a domain with one of your names it in for better anonymity, unless I guess you have a popular last name? [email protected] looks cool, but consider if you want random sites like lemmy to have that data.
• don't pick a homophone or weird word because at some point you'll have to speak your email to another human and it's really awkward to tell your bank that your email is [email protected] or [email protected] or was it [email protected]?

Also, the web interfaces of some of these other email services might not be as good as Gmail's UI. It helps to use an email client instead. Thunderbird is fine or you could use something simpler like claws-mail or even something like mutt.

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

Riseup.net Private, free, encrypted

The ProtonMail CEO recently said that Trump "fights for the little guy". I know that's not a substantial critique of their privacy policy or encryption standards, but I wouldn't trust a company that says something so baseless, divisive, and in support of a fascist oligarch.

Most if not all non-paid options will have privacy concerns similar to gmail, so you’ll have to pay. I pay for Proton, and though I’m not thrilled about some of the political bullshit their CEO has been up to recently, I think I’ll stay with them for now since they’re still good for privacy, and their other services are solid. They’re also very upfront about what they charge and why, and I think they still plan to transition to a non-profit.