How do you manage your email?

I'm in a situation where I'm going to basically ditch my current email address(es) due to spam and a couple of other reasons.

I can't decide whether to go with the 'cloud' approach and to route my domain through something like gmail or outlook.com or whether to just create a new IMAP account on my server and stick with desktop clients.

I've read some horror stories of Google deleting or locking people's accounts (very worrying when this account would also be associated with Google Drive, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Adwords, etc) due to 'suspicious activity'. My usage would be perfectly innocent but I have some reservations about having so much data tied to one account.

Are my reservations valid, or wrongly founded? How do you manage your email?