[tiatia]

Gmail is shit. Gmail is Email Extraordinaire but if something goes wrong and you lose access, good luck gaining it back. Try to call somebody. This, and all the privacy issues.

[Eridrus]

Account recovery is a shitshow everywhere, either it's almost useless or it's a huge vulnerability with no good middle ground I've seen.

For a moment I thought this would be a good use case for federated authentication, but who would you even trust to run that securely?

[tiatia]

How about a company that you pay and that you can call? (and maybe submit a passport copy if need be or something)

They sell email for your own domain (you can also buy a domain there): https://www.infomaniak.com/en

Bonus: Based in Switzerland, no EU or US jurisdiction.