&gt; Obviously every third-party service is trusted, that doesn&#x27;t mean one &quot;doesn&#x27;t care&quot;.<p>No, I&#x27;m serious about this.  I wasn&#x27;t trying to be flippant.  If you care enough about the integrity of your email content and it not being used to further a company&#x27;s profit, the only way to be <i>sure</i> of that, to the extent that you can (which may not be much), is to run your own mail server.  If that seems like it&#x27;s way too much trouble, I think a you should take a close look at your motives for wanting a gmail alternative.  Is it about the integrity of your email, or sticking it to Google?  If it&#x27;s avoiding Google because they specifically cause you concern, that&#x27;s fine, and there likely plenty of choices, but I&#x27;m not sure what they are (as I said, I just use Gmail because I don&#x27;t care).<p>&gt; By your logic even a private mail server isn&#x27;t enough, you&#x27;d have to use PGP.<p>Well, by my logic you have to do enough to make yourself comfortable.  Depending on your reasons for avoiding some other companies that will be different things.<p>&gt; If you don&#x27;t have any recommendations just say so.<p>I don&#x27;t have any recommendations for Gmail if you consider a good UI, responsively web based, and free as major components of that.  If you are willing to give up one or more of those, there are options.  The local ISP I mentioned is Sonic.net.  By all accounts (including mine, I&#x27;ve worked there multiple times in the past), a great company, and with great EFF ratings.  An email account there is not free though.