Step one to freedom was to use my own domain, redirected to my old account, but I'm seriously thinking about doing it all myself.
But keeping a whole server up to date, secure, etc.... that's a full time job. Is there a good solution?
I believe they stopped this recently.
But you could have always become a paying customer of Google.
However, they still scan and read email. People can't be inconvenienced. I tend to think this is worse than scanning for ads.
I also tend to think anyone concerned about privacy moved from Google long ago. After all, its terrifying when you allow a company to determine if perhaps your received/sent links are fake, or malware, maybe they should report that you like certain sites, or have a flight.. People lived the idea of the President maxing out his power with executive orders, until they didn't.. Life is ask about tradeoffs i suppose..
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails...
I recently signed up for ProtonMail.
I wanted a reasonably cheap and secure email service that allowed me to use custom domains. Proton Mail seemed like a good fit. No complaints so far.
One other option that I almost went with was Rackspace Webmail:
https://www.rackspace.com/en-gb/email-hosting/webmail
However, that $2 per user per month only applies if you buy a minimum of 5 user licences, so it worked out more expensive for me than the 5 Euros a month for ProtonMail Plus: