All these other companies are trying to sell you on the notion of email privacy and security.

The thing is - email isn't just sitting in your mailbox to only be viewed by you. The recipient has a copy which could leak it (or via hax). Copies of email can be saved by both incoming and outgoing systems.

If you need security & privacy - email is not the technology you want to use whatsoever.

Which primary competitors would those be? Asking for a friend...

Protonmail probably the most hyped, but personally I switched to Tutanota. I like their commitment to open source - you can build their webmail client yourself. They support full text search (unlike Protonmail) and also 4-5x cheaper than Protonmail/Fastmail, if you're fine with their cheapest 1GB storage plan.

ProtonMail is the most promising.

I've been using ProtonMail and ProtonVPN for over a year, paid subscription. Both web and mobile client is ok, not great. On desktop I use Outlook (Windows) and Thunderbird (Linux). I like the domain @pm.me.

Overall happy with the service. Customer support has answered questions competently.

Protonmail has a huge gap between promises and what's delivered. Their IMAP bridge is slow and buggy, their mobile app hasn't been meaningfully updated in a year, and even as a paying user they put upsell ads in the sidebar, above your own folders.

If PM is not a honeypot, they are incompetent.