Why do you pay for email in 2022?
 

I am having a really hard time justifying paying for email in 2022. I had a discussion with my spouse who raised some great points. Hoping some of you that pay can answer with your thoughts on this. Note that this is from the perspective of a personal account. There's no doubt that a business account should be on their own domain on a paid account.

There are a few common reasons why everyone pays for email, but I don't find them justified in 2022 as much as they used to.

Your provider might go away/You might lose your address
This has indeed traditionally been a big risk. But if you are on gmail, I just cannot see this happening. 99% of people seem to be on gmail as their primary. Even if gmail does go away, pretty much everyone in the world just lost their primary email address and the world will figure out how to go from there. There have also been cases of people losing their email accounts, but again this is so rare that it almost seems like planning for an apocalypse.

You lose privacy with free email
This is certainly true, but even if we pay for email, do we _really_ have privacy? Facebook, Google, and Amazon still have all of our life info. Our friends are on these platforms even if we are not, and having our data in them irrespective of where we are. What are we _really_ gaining? It seems like a drop in the ocean with no meaningful result.

You get to use your own domain
I definitely like to use my own domain name, but this has definitely caused me to lose emails by the other party not understanding my email address, and assuming something that ends in gmail.com. It has also caused some raised eyebrows (and maybe eye rolls). Overall, I'm going to call this one a wash.

Overall, I feel like there's no tangible reason to pay in 2022 unless that $5 a month or whatever is completely insignificant to you. What are your thoughts? What am I missing?

All the reasons quoted are perfectly valid.

You could also ask:

Why spend hundreds on an iPhone 13 instead of a cheap Android 'phone?

Why spend thousands on a BMW M760i instead of a Kia Rio?

It's all personal circumstances and choice.

I'm a big Gmail user, and I do basically agree with you that for most people it is the best option. But, I disagree with this statement:
I don't know of any statistics on this, but you can find plenty of people who have been locked out of their accounts on the official Gmail community forums, on Reddit, and wherever people discuss email. I once was locked out when Google's mysterious algorithms decided that something was suspicious about me logging into my account from my living room using the same laptop I always use. Then when I tried to get in they would only send codes to an old phone number that had been removed from my account. I eventually recovered the account, but it made me realize how you are completely at the mercy of Google's automated systems with no human being to appeal to when things go wrong. So, if you use Gmail be extremely careful to have a current recovery address, phone number, and alternate methods setup like one-time codes, etc. Though, be aware that Google doesn't always offer you the option to use those other methods--they frequently seem to default to sending a code to whatever phone number you have registered.

Also, these days it is extremely hard to get a short, memorable Gmail address that can be typed in easily. If you happen to have a good Gmail address you created a long time ago you are good to go, but anyone signing up today will end up with a long one.

Welcome to the forum! Great question. The primary reason to pay for email in 2022 is indeed privacy, but there are other reasons too.

Here are various reasons... I might have missed a few:

1) No tracking, no ads, no aggregate personal profile connected to or generated from your email. The counter argument always seems to be that if you are emailing people at google/gmail anyway, then google still knows what's in those emails obviously. So it's true that you're still generating a profile to some degree with google by emailing other people who have gmail addresses, BUT not everyone uses gmail, not everyone you receive email from uses gmail, *especially* services that you use such as financial institutions, online stores, service providers, etc. (which is a huge aspect of the profile being generated). And so you're therefore taking more control of what they are collecting and how it's aggregated. i.e.: Google won't have access to your Amazon receipts, your bank alerts, your social media alerts, your service provider info, etc... In any case, using a paid provider keeps a *lot* of personal information out of the hands of the profiling big tech algorithms.... and so the saying that "if you are not paying for the product, you ARE the product" is still largely true in this case, even if you still email a lot of your friends who use gmail.

2) When you do exchange emails with friends/family/colleagues outside of gmail, google in this case won't see any of that exchange, and for those of your friends/family/colleagues on the *same* paid email service, those emails won't even go outside the servers of that email provider (depending on the provider, but that's usually the case).

3) Many paid email providers give you dozens or hundreds or even unlimited aliases. This is hugely useful for managing different accounts and controlling who sees what email address. This increases your potential for privacy, security at other services you use, anonymity to some degree, and separating other profile aggregators, and increases your control of spam by allowing you to see who is selling your address and easily blocking them.

4) Some paid email providers have varying levels of additional encryption features that add an extra layer of protection to your email... this is a big topic on its own with many nuances of what/how/when the encryption takes place, and how useful that is for your use case scenarios and threat levels, but it's a major reason why some people use paid service providers. See other threads for encryption info.

5) Some email providers have vastly superior jurisdictions where their email servers are located. This may not be important to most people in 99% of situations, but it matters to some people and is worth paying for those services in better jurisdictions. Once you understand what your government (and by comparison various governments around the world) can and can't do with your email even just on principle alone, this might also become a point of consideration for you.

6) Email is only one aspect of the services you're using that are being tracked by providers like Google built into their email service... for example, your calendars, contacts, files, documents, notes, etc.! So all the above can apply to those other services that you use connected to your gmail account too! Coupled with location info in your smartphone, IP address tracking, etc., google (or fill-in-the-blank big tech provider you use the most) knows far more about you than you may realize. So you can further reduce your footprint since many paid email providers also have calendars, contacts, notes, files, etc... so again, taking those services outside of google further reduces your profile in google, in this example.

7) Some paid email providers have all sorts of great additional features that are worth the price of subscription by themselves -- some allow super easy management of domains, DNS, simple website hosting, WebDAV features, aliases (already mentioned), advanced filtering, screening, productivity, other collaboration tools, various cool privacy tools, etc., etc...

8) Customer service... some paid providers are good at customer service... you'll actually get a response back by a real human in a reasonable period of time. Imagine that. I know of several people who have lost control of their gmail accounts or have been hacked. It's a myth that google is great at handling those situations. The effort and time to get control back if they've been hacked is significant. Having a paid account with superior, responsive customer service can be a life saver.

9) All the above, coupled with using other good privacy/security practices, using a good password manager with good passwords, using two-factor authentication, limiting your social media exposure, using other services such as VPNs, etc., can significantly improve your safety profile on the Internet, and reduce your risk to other security concerns such as being the victim of targeted phishing, account hacking, identity theft, etc...

10) By paying for email services, you're also supporting a different business model instead of the profile-aggregating ad-based big tech companies... and you get what you pay for... you pay for the product instead of being the product.

11) Email is still very important in our daily lives. Your digital life is connected to it, but your real life too -- your financial accounts, your personal services, your shopping receipts, your job applications, your personal/family info that you don't choose to share in social media... why trust all that to a free service? All companies have to make money somehow, and it makes sense to pay for an email service that is in the business of email alone, not an email service that is actually an ad-revenue profiling company, right?

12) Yes, while it's true the "gmail" email address will likely be around for a long time, just buy a domain name and then you can have service portability and move away from a paid email service provider if you're not happy with them or they go out of business in the future.

Anyway, best of luck, and again, welcome to the forum. This is a great place to get questions answered, there are lots of experienced folks here.

There is no getting away from ad targeting, whether or not you use Gmail. You are still tracked by Google, Facebook, and many others as long as you interact with the Internet. For example, every store you purchase something from online gathers information and uses it and sells it, along with your bank, your credit card companies, every forum you sign up for, your car loan company, insurance, newsletters, social media, etc. etc. The main way to avoid seeing ads is to use ad blockers, but if you don't you will see ads targeted towards your profile that may or may not include information from Gmail's services. I have experimented blocking as much as I could and I just see crappier ads--really scammy stuff. If I just use Gmail normally I don't see any ads within Gmail but I do have slightly better targeted advertising. As to security, Gmail is really good at it, and I think many people are fooling themselves that their small email provider has anywhere near the same level of security. That is more important to me--I don't want a hacker to be able to break into my email account, or steal all the passwords from some unsecured database. Billions of users are testing this security at Gmail every day, but with a small email provider you have no way of knowing if someone isn't sitting in their basement reading your emails for kicks.

There's that argument again that since you can't get away from it 100%, you might as well just cave in and let it happen. I do understand that argument and why most people are fine with it. And while it's true that you can't escape *some* profile being generated by the big tech companies, you can absolutely reduce your footprint and change the kind and depth of profile they generate about you. You can take more ownership of it instead of surrender, and more and more jurisdictions are making laws that improve your control to some degree. In fact you were already doing it to some degree by using ad blockers and thus getting crappy ads. But like others have said, it's a personal choice how far you want to go. Obviously, to get rid of all tracking, you need to get off the grid, which is not what we're talking about, and very difficult to do.

As for the "security" issue, that's a different discussion than privacy of course.

And whatever email service you use, you have to trust them that someone is "not sitting in their basement reading your emails for kicks." It's very true, that just because you pay for email, that doesn't necessarily make them more trustworthy or secure, but likewise just because they have a billion users, doesn't necessarily make them more trustworthy or secure either. Google has been the subject of plenty of security breaches, as have other free services like Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.. And if years of experience and security experience counts (which it does) frankly some of these small paid third party email services have been around for longer than GMail, and some have contributed extensively to the open source code that powers most email providers.... or in some cases they release most or all of their codebase as open source, which is then open to all to scrutinize. Gmail, MS, etc., certainly don't do that.

But with everything, YMMV and everyone has different needs and preferences.

1) Support. Not just a support ticket system but an attitude that its worth investing serious amounts of money/effort to prevent customers from ever losing a message.

2) More functionality. My Fastmail account supports Sieve (mail filtering language, much more powerful than normal rules), CalDAV, and CardDAV. I use Thunderbird (a email client) and am looking forward to replacing my Fastmail IMAP account with a JMAP account when they add support for it (its on their current roadmap).

3) Gmail appears to be the gold standard for spam detection. But most free email accounts seem to do a poor job.

Its hard to envision Google killing or crippling the free version of Gmail but look at the list of the 245 products they've killed off so far in https://killedbygoogle.com . Some were very popular/successful. Long term you just can't rely upon Google.

4) I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. Lots of services now rely upon you logging in via either Facebook (I refuse to have an account with them) or Gmail.

5) The possibility of getting your email provided by a company whose only business is email. That avoids many potential conflicts of interest, and focuses their efforts on providing good email service. You can get free email from your ISP but they view it as just a cost center. With Gmail you're not the customer, you're the product.

Alot of email providers are worried of thier server being used for spam now,I think thats why they dont want FREE accounts mostly.....


Welcome to EMD floatinghermit,I hope you like it here :)

Why do I pay for email when I can get it quite reasonable service gratis from Gmail?


Well, why do I buy coffee and tea when my employer supplies unlimited tea and coffee and I spend most of my day there? Well, I like the tea that I bring from home better than what I am supplied there.


The real reason that I pay for email is just that I like the service that I get from Fastmail better than what I can see at Gmail. There's really no other reason. If I had no choice I could certainly manage with just a Gmail account or just a Hotmail account. My wife uses her Hotmail account that she has for almost 25 years despite me paying for her Fastmail account (that she uses for some rare circumstances that don't work well with Hotmail).

I hated Gmail as they can't recover my deleted account on their policy, but I'm still using Gmail as my primary email with a not-so-preferred username, also it goes without saying @gmail.com is so easy to say your email addy to the bank staff and what not...without the need to repeat.

Recently I'm also back to ZOHO mail, seems pretty neat, could well be my secondary/backup email for now ;)

First, Gmail is NOT a company. Microsoft and Google have made huge contributions to Linux because they use it internally or in products they sell. They also participate in open standards along with Intel. Microsoft has released some open source software. It doesn't benefit anyone to make the rest of their software open source.

I don't pay for email. I have considered paying for it. BUT, I have no come up with a rational reason for ponying up for an email account.

I am currently using 14 accounts, using Claws Mail, all free. I rarely use Firefox for email.

AOL POP3
BlueHome.net POP3
EuMX.net POP3
*Gmail 1 POP3, 1 IMAP (company account)
*GMX.com 1 POP3
*Outlook 4 POP3
*Yahoo 2 POP3 2 IMAP (company accounts)
* Check accounts with Andriod App.

One Yahoo and one Gmail are primary accounts.

Switching to another account paid or otherwise would be painful. A lot of folks would have to be notified of the change. While I am a bit concerned with security or privacy, it is not a huge thing for me. I do not send stuff via email I do not want the world to know. Even if I had a paid account, that would me I must trust them to a degree. Most of the the folks I correspond with are to Yahoo or Gmail accounts. So secure messaging is not going to happen. Will I have the ability to use gpg, no one I correspond with has a clue. I do add a signature to all email I sent using my two primary accounts in the hope that someone will know what that is.

Like I said at the beginning I have thought about getting a paid account, also probably my own domain. Yet every year I decide not to do so. I cannot see paying for an account that I would not use as a primary account. Making that account a primary account would mean having to notify a lot of folks of this change.

I have GSuite and Office 365 and Zoho.

But Zoho is lower cost and has more features.

Still, Zoho is underrated in email, but low cost, more feature and reliable too.

For me, the best thing about Zoho........ its admin panel has live chat with support. Anything, they are ready to support 24 x 7.

I have paid for many providers. Include:

1. Runbox: paid for about 3 years, gave up for bad webmail experience
2. FM: paid for about 3 years, gave up b/c I have another Pobox account
3. Pobox: paid for many years, still in use
4. GSuite: paid for many years, still in use
5. Tuffmail: paid for about 2 years, they are a excellent provider, gave up for nothing
6. Mailbox.org: paid for 1 year, their speed is slow to me
7. Mail.de: paid for 1 year, a excellent provider, gave up for nothing
8. mxroute: paid for 2 years, still in use (yes TLS-Mail)
9. Tutanota: paid for 1 year, have no good experience with them
10. Yandex Mail360: paid for 1 year, still in use for a domain
11. PrivateMail by torguard: got a lifetime account from them (100+ USD)

And I have accounts on almost all these URLs:
https://cloudcache.net/data/mails.html

I am tired I have so many email accounts. Even in the night dream I was thinking I should read email right now...

By the way, even though I use Gmail as my main email management account I do use paid email because I like having my own domains and domain-based email. It is as simple as that. I do use some of the domains for various small business purposes too, but even if I didn't I like having my own personalized short and easy to spell and remember email address that stands out from the crowd. At the moment my email provider of choice is Purelymail, so I get domain email for $10 a year. That's pretty cheap for the benefits I get. The way I have it set up I also get my main emails stored in multiple locations. That means if my free Gmail account becomes unavailable for some reason (most likely if I get locked out) I can instantly move to another inbox and keep in touch via email. I don't actually use my Gmail address (even though it is a good one) for most things to help keep it protected from spam and phishing attacks, but even so it has been revealed in various database hacks since I have been using it so long. Luckily, Gmail's spam and phishing filters remain the best in the industry and I rarely see any malicious stuff in my inbox.

I think you missed Office 365 only.

I used it many years till my inbox was on 100+ GB and they were moving data to the Archive folder, which I don't like and the search was too slow.

Else Office 365 is a good choice too. I have some accounts on my domains and still the team is happy with it.

Thanks for the detailed information, everyone. Lots of good info here.

Apologies I couldn't reply earlier. I did start looking into some of the respones and wanted to comment on them.

Wow, there's actually a lot more of this than I thought. This is pretty scary.


Thanks a ton! This is a lot more than I had even hoped for. A lot of those are valid and make sense to me as well.

Some of these points are addressed by having your own domain (which I do) but don't use as my primary email. I use this for fully automated service sign ups and such but not for any sort of correspondence with humans.

Jurisdictions is another very valid point that I might start thinking about.

Yeah this is one of my biggest concerns too. I'm fairly confident that Gmail's security is better than even other larger paid providers (such as fastmail or protonmail, let alone services like purelymail). I'm completely happy to pay something like $10 per year, but I worry that my mail will be less secure than it can be with gmail.

Very valid points. One thing that worries me is that I am techie enough for me to know that it's not always easy to know when your service is compromised. When a larger service like gmail or outlook is compromised, its a lot more likely to come to attention than when a smaller provider with a 100 users. Basically, my worry is there's a lot of "unknown" breaches in smaller services (for instance if I self host myself, this would be likely)

Thanks a lot Bamb0! Yeah the spam issue has really made things a lot worse. I do self host certain things for myself, but email is most definitely not going to be one of them.

What do you actually like in fastmail over gmail? I've tried fastmail before (back when it had a free tier), and I personally didn't feel like it was as good as gmail when it comes to the ease with which I could handle my email. I have a TON of emails, and gmail's search and labeling has always been flawless for me. Fastmail is likely not too different, but I am having a tough time seeing how it's better.

I am an email account hoarder as well :D Definitely see some on the list that I don't have accounts on though. Will fill them up!

I have my own domain as well, and I think it's great. However, I haven't actually used it as my primary email, since it doesn't seem super great when humans are involved (they seem to assume @gmail.com and @outlook.com are the only ways in which email addresses can end)

Yes, this is a problem! That's one reason I have been culling down the domains I own to only the shortest and easiest to spell, and they are all ".coms." However, today if one is getting a new free Gmail address it is not going to be short, and probably won't be very simple. Just yesterday I was dealing with a bunch of email addresses that had to be typed in and it was interesting to see how many Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and even AOL addresses there were. Most were Gmail, naturally, and I don't recall a single domain email among this group of ordinary citizens. Personally, I think Gmail is perfectly suitable as a longterm main email address, but you have to be meticulous about setting up everything carefully: current and up to date recovery email and phone number, use 2FA with every method you can so you have alternatives when one fails, print out the one-time backup codes and store them somewhere safe, and check this stuff periodically to make sure you keep it current. Also, if you purchase Google One (more storage and other stuff) you do get a better level of customer service with the ability to contact a human being via email or chat, though I don't know how useful it is if you get locked out.

That's a bit difficult to say,since I hardly use Gmail and I am using FastMail daily for the 20 years. One thing is that with Fastmail it's easy to have many instances in separate tabs: if you want to open an email without leaving the current view then I can just use the browser to open it in a separate tab, and then continue from there (like clicking the search field, selecting the sender's address that will already be there, and seeing all my correspondence with that person. I can sometimes have several instances of the webmail with severak different searches to have all the info I need for an email being composed in a separate tab (or several emails being composed simultaneously in different tabs. When I tried Gmail (2004) it was all restricted to a single tab, and I don't see that now it's different, except for opening conversations in separate popup windows that are limited compared to the main webmail app. But then I don;t use Gmail regularly. Another thing that I do regularly with FastMail and absolutely couldn't do with Gmail is send mail from many different addresses without having to confirm each address. This was actually limited by FastMail last year, so some usage scenarios are no longer possible, but it's still possible to send from Fastmail using all addresses in a domain without having to validate each one separately, as long as you can validate a random address in that domain. (And Gmail actually never really allowed sending from separate addresses: they always added a "sender" header that showed it was from Gmail, and conflicted with the way Outlook displays email headers, though the fault was Outlook's interpretation of the headers).

Anther major reason I didn't like Gmail is that they forced conversations, and have no folders. I use the same email store for personal and for work, and at the time I was employed by two or three separate employers at the same time, so I wanted the email stores completely separate (in separate folder and subfolders). Gmail had no separation and no concept of a subfolder. I did like Gmail's search at the time, so I forwarded almost all my email there just for being able to search there, but I don't need this anymore, since Fastmail's search abilities got much better over time (I also used Gmail's attachment previewer back then, but that's also not an issue nowadays because open office variants got much better in handling MS Office documents).
But the main reason was that Fastmail 15-20 years ago, maybe even just 10 years ago was a very personal service: you could actually reach people, and the people were the ones developing and running the service, not just customer service representatives. Browsing old threads here can show how much influence users feedback had on FastMail's development. So it was fun using a service that listens to you. They still do but not here (and having a developer sending you to the beta server to test a fix to an issue you raised 20 minutes earlier is something that not likely to happen nowadays.)

You can open as many browser tabs as you want with Gmail running in each one.
There are ways to set this up so it works properly in Gmail. You can even send email from your own domain in free Gmail if you want to.
You can turn off conversation view. Gmail uses labels, which are far more powerful than folders.
In my experience FM support often takes a minimum of 24 hours to respond, and often longer. I went weeks without certain problems being resolved that were bugs. OTOH Gmail has essentially no customer support other than online forms if you get locked out that don't always work. This is probably Gmail's biggest Achilles heel--no support and the danger of just losing everything if something goes wrong, like your phone breaks and you can't access the 2FA codes any other way.

Don't forget mail.zoho.com

They have evolved pretty fast and its interface is as good as Gmail IMO. Although the free tier is kind of limited but the paid account isn't that pricey.

When I established 2FA (using FreeOTP app) with several services, such as FastMail, Google, Dropbox, I wrote down the "secret string" and entered it manually in another copy of the app in an old phone. Then when I don't have my phone (such as when I broke the screen) I can use the older phone instead. It has no SIM but it's not needed for producing OTPs. You just have to make sure the time is set correctly. You can write the data on a piece of paper and when needed use it with any OTP app that allows you to type in the secret string. On paper it is safe from hackers using PDF vulnerabilities and the like.

It's much easier, when enrolling your 'phone by scanning a QR code, to take a screen capture of the code, save it in PNG format and store it in a KeePass database.

I just store the codes in my password manager. That's all they are--long random passwords that are used to generate the codes. But, most people seem to forget to backup this important information as is clear when you read lots of support forums. And, even if we do have backups that can provide the 2FA codes that doesn't help when your phone isn't working for some reason and you don't have the backups available, which has happened to me before after a long flight halfway around the world.

That's why I think it's good to have them on paper (and have it with you when you're travelling far away from home). Then in case of emergency you can buy a cheap phone and get access to you online life, or you can get a desktop based OTP generator and use your computer for 2FA.

I use an online password manager, so all my stuff is available anywhere I can access the web. Of course, then you have the problem of securing your password manager using a different form of 2FA so that you don't lock yourself out of all your passwords. Options include security keys, emailed 2FA, or possibly no 2FA on the password manager. Frankly, as long as you are using truly random and long passwords, and different ones for every site, there is no danger of someone "breaking" your password. The big danger is human engineering: tricking you into giving up your password with an email attack of some sort. Of course, hackers also do manage to steal passwords direct from companies all the time, but that is probably still a less severe attack vector.

Good hints about storing 2FA code. I might have to unenroll and reenroll so I can get the original QR code again.

On a related note, I kind hate that gmail doesn't let you enroll in 2FA (with google authenticator) unless you provide a phone number in the beginning. I mean, can you make it more obvious that you want my information more than you want to actually secure my account? I can't think of a reason why you have to be forced into giving phone number to enable it.

I essentially prefer Google authenticator over yubikey since it's harder to replace a lost yubikey. Google Authenticator can be "moved" to a different phone very easily as we talk above. This potentially makes it less secure, but I trust my password manager enough that it's a non issue.

Google knows that without a recovery phone number a ton of people will get locked out of their accounts. Check out any Gmail help forum and most of the posts are people begging for help to get back into their accounts, and a high-percentage of the time they say they have lost the password for some reason. I imagine a high-percentage of these posts are from scammers who want to hack someone's account, but legitimate ones soon learn that the only way back into a Google account is via automated systems that seem to default to sending codes to the registered phone number. Even when you have a recovery email address the systems seem to default to sending texts to your phone number.

I had to look up "cold calls" to make sure ti was what I thought it was. It was. None of my email providers have my phone number.

Back to the original question there is another halfway domain and free email system that I have used for many things and I think works well. You can set up your own domain email addresses with some domain registrars (I use Porkbun) and then use their free email forwarding to send any emails to your main free account (I use Gmail) where you handle the actual email. Very few addresses I give out ever require a response sent using that address, and even if a response is needed you can just use the free Gmail address if you want to. This limits the exposure of your main Gmail address tremendously yet when you want to use a domain email address it is available. Also, if for some reason I get locked out of Gmail I can change the email forwarding very quickly to point to another free email service I use like maybe Outlook.com or another. There are specialized forwarding services like POBox.com (owned by Fastmail) that can handle all this too if your domain registrar doesn't include forwarding, plus you can send mail from your domain using POBox.com's SMTP server. There is also a method to send email from Gmail using Google's SMTP server, but if someone digs into the email headers they can determine what your actual Gmail address is. In any case, it is a way to send and receive domain email without paying a service provider like Fastmail. https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157

I feel like that's like the official response, but it is COMPLETELY in their hands. They can very easily use alternate email addresses to verify the account, or let you generate codes from Google Authenticator, or any number of other methods that don't need you to share your PII. Under the pretext of making our accounts more "secure", they are just getting our PII.

I'm okay with that being an option I can CHOOSE to use for my accounts, but now it feels practically mandatory if you don't want to risk losing your account. Also, if you end up moving to a different place, there's almost no way for you to escape this data collection even on an old account.

Maybe this should be a separate topic though ..

I was never a big fan of paid accounts until I got one with bluebottle which functioned so brilliantly I changed my mind. When they went under, I replaced them with posteo.de which is almost as good. To some degree paid accounts are less privacy invasive, provide more stability, and just seem to try harder to satisfy the user. There have been exceptions. VFEmail turned into webmail so complex it became useless, and more recently, Tutanota cheated me out of months of use on my paid account, by closing it due to 'inactivity', and not bothering to even refund the difference.

I am currently without any paid email accounts for the first time in probably a decade or more. Decided to go all free. I do have some domain emails that get forwarded from my domain registrar, but those forwards don't cost extra. To me the bottom line is KISS--Keep It Simple Stupid. I find the less email systems I have to manage and pay for the less stress in my life, and I find that I am not missing anything. YMMV.

What am I missing?

Firstly that "that $5 a month or whatever is completely insignificant". I'm retired and on a budget, but even I could afford that...but I don't...I pay about $15 a year at posteo email provider, so that's like a little over a dollar per month. Exactly what sort of amazing and cannot live without item does the wife expect to be able to afford, on that extra $1 to $5 a month you will be saving?

Your provider might go away/You might lose your address

Actually mine did, and I did...twice. A few years ago, Live.com decided that I could not live without their wonderful email service, and that they absolutely could not live without my phone number, so they locked it and held it hostage. Now they still do not have my phone number, but also are left with an abandoned email account that no longer generates any good saleable data. Last year gmail made the same exact mistake, with the same exact result. I consider both a win for me (in more ways than one), and a loss for them. While I intended to dump both eventually for being nosey-nellies, I might still be with them if they had not gotten greedy.

do we _really_ have privacy?

Privacy and security go hand in hand, and we have as much of both as we choose to acquire through time, effort and expense. I chose to have locks on doors and windows, a burglar alarm, motion-sensor CCTV, and a shotgun parked by my bedside. You may of opted out with the apologist rant that all locks can be picked, all doors can be kicked in, all alarms and CCTV can be defeated, and that everyone is a spineless pacifist that would rather die by a home invader that kill a thug...as Hollyweird has so desperately tried to convince through its myriad movies. If so, then I have a lot more security than you, simply because I was willing to take the time, make the effort, and pay the piper. Same for privacy. If you opted out of curtains/blinds on the windows, paper shredder, regularly evicting corporate squatters (LSOs, zombie cookies, etc.) from your PC, VPN, software/hardware firewalls, antivirus, antispyware, and so on, then I have a lot more privacy than you do for exactly the same reasons as before. Corporate thugs like Sundar Pichai, Zucky Zoidberg, Neal Mohan, and Satya Nadella will take as much as you allow, and while you may not be able to stop them from taking something, you can stop them from taking everything...if you are willing to take the time, make the effort, and pay the piper. I'm reminded of a speech by Frederick Douglass "“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.” Concessions empower bullies to demand more, not less.

People are often afraid of the wrong things, and so it is with privacy and security. Many trust their email to small companies that are much more likely to be hacked or suffer from simple lack of security and privacy controls. Plus, how do you know they aren't just reading your emails for kicks? There are those who refuse to give a recovery phone number to Google and then lose their account when something goes wrong. Most people are most in danger from phishing or other email attacks, so if you want the most privacy and security choose the provider with the best spam filters. Those are not the small providers that provide paid services.

I often have to explain to people why we will not implement SMS-type two factor login or SMS as a recovery method: because I really don't want anyone's phone number for any reason.