I've had like three primary email accounts since the dawn of the popular internet in the 90's
The first was Hotmail because that was a big deal at the time.
The second was google because the interface was slick and it came with (what was at the time) a lot of free storage.
The third is protonmail specifically because after decade+ on Google I realized they pretty much have the keys to the kingdom on my life's data. All my personal relationships and business being filtered through their inbox for a long-ass time. Just because they "know me" inside out for a significant part of my life doesn't mean I gotta just keep feeding them data indefinitely.
How you finding protonmail compared to Gmail? The thing I like about Gmail is I can find shit in my endless history....I also love the calendar integration.
Protonmail is fine for searching old emails and they have their own calendar integration. I self host calDAV for my own calendar so I cannot comment on protonmail's other cloud services but I'm happy enough with their email service that I subscribe yearly for it.
That's the downside of not getting data mined, you need to pay for these services. Setting up a private cloud is not impossible for a derp like me but a private email server is definitely well beyond my skillset so that's something I pay for.
Even having done professional mail hosting for years at one point in my sysadmin career, I still think paid email hosting is worth it even for those with the skills to stand it up themselves, at least for any inbox that might see actual important communication.
The reliable infrastructure, and the reputation management demands on a self-hosters time are a tough sell, when the cost to make it someone else's problem is comparatively low. :D