I was a gmail user for years, trading convenience for privacy (exactly the type of person the ECB was talking about this morning in pushing a CBDC) but I have switched to protonmail. I'm gradually weaning myself off Google in general, using proton drive and calendar, and switching to Brave browser with pre search search engine.
I need to move my standalone e-mail account (currently @ gmail.com) to something better (e.g., protonmail).
Also, for e-mail for my personal domain I need to move off of GSuite legacy (now that Google is requiring a paid subscription). I see Cloudflare has routing with "catch-all", which is pretty much all I need, then I can have it all go to the one protonmail account.
I use Proton mail for my important stuff. I use my old outlook and gmail accounts for anything else. I try to use SimpleLogin for all my email accounts.
I use my own hosted email server on my own domain name, for personal/business use.
Any other shity custodial solution is only when I deal with spam/temporary/useless registrations.
Also I use several aliases for each time I need to login with email in some place. In this way I control the leaks. Simply delete that alias and you stop spams from leaks.