My take is, like with many things, they start out with the best of intentions and then get told they have to divulge customer private information because x y z.

I doubt that means it's totally without merit. If I forget about the negligible benefit (intra-protonmail messaging) it's actually not very private, but quite secure and reliable email service.

Then you got to ask, is that worth paying for. I suppose that's why there's a free tier. Advantages are negligible, unless you despise other cloud services (more.)