I recently switched from Fastmail to iCloud, and I can say I'm very happy. (I initially switched from Gmail for the reasons you describe).
No functional difference for me, and I save some bills. I don't consider it a free lunch, either, since I basically pre-paid when I bought my iPhone.
Re:Switching from Gmail to FastMail
by stock_toaster on Friday July 19, 2013 @04:11PM
(#6072647)
The ability to use your own domain is a big win for fastmail though.
http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/#fn:1 "This may be a deal breaker if you’re concerned about government spying. "
I believe that Fastmail is a valid option if your main problem is with Ads and the fact that Google might be reading all your mails and companies are buying this big data to sell you better services / more targeted Ads around the web.
I'm currently switching to Fastmail because I don't believe in free lunch and I won't stand for it anymore.
If I want to make sure no one is reading my mails, then I have a problem. Most governments are doing this and we can't do much about. If I need privacy, then I use GPG.