Free Email providers? There are alternatives some popular and niche. Some cost and others don't. Some offer different features gmail doesn't.

If you can't get off of gmail maybe you just like gmail.

A good paid email account is like $50 a year.

What is the problem?

$5 vs free is hard sell - let alone $50.

10% of an Internet bill?

One latte per month? Go away kid, you bother me.

Yes, the masses of the internet who've grown accustomed to free e-mail while being locked to an gmail domain are definitely going to shill out $50/y for...better spam flagging?

Well, they should try Fastmail. It's amazingly good.

And, I run my own mail servers for other reasons, but Fastmail is really great, especially for small groups or small companies.

purelymail is probably about $10/year (actual billing specifics more complicated) and that's not billed per seat, they bill on actual usage.

iCloud?