The Proton free tier is pretty limited compared to Gmail, in particular for me, you’re only allowed 1 label. The basic paid tier opens up a lot more. They definitely want you to upgrade to the paid tier.

At the beginning of the pandemic I looked into ways to de-Google and found Nextcloud. It wasn’t the easiest thing to start with, especially for a novice, but I had the time and the hardware, and I’m the type to not mind jumping into something difficult if it means solving a specific problem. I then found out about Bitwarden and had a great experience setting that up. After that I was confident enough to try hosting anything I could find. It’s been good times ever since 😀