I second fastmail, it's a really great service. I've been a happy customer for a year now, using my own domain and a sieve script for automated triaging of my emails. Their web interface is really, really good, and they're working hard to modernize the email protocols, with their work on JMAP and so on.
If you expect your emails to be inaccessible to anyone except you and the recipient you'll have to encrypt them anyway. If you are worried about the data-mining for ad purposes on other providers switching to a paid provider like Fastmail is still a good option and while everyone is subject to ad-tech data mining not everyone is subject to a targeted collection by a government actor most of the time.
My threat model is: governments can read my email but that will incur a cost, a timelapse and a judge -- not just a point and click mega-spy interface.
I want to bash Trump's latest haircut without fear of incoming, frivolous litigation.
I do, however, expect consequences if I do something really stupid.
I'm in France, and use email mostly to keep up with newsletters, personal comms, and non-important professional comms. If your threat model includes the Australian Government as a threat, then yes, using another provider would make sense. Then again, if you have government agencies in your threat model, you might want to move to E2E communications anyways.
I don't think the blog post is accurate, see [1]. From the three providers mentioned above (fastmail/mailbox/runbox) which I have experience with, fastmail has by far the best ui, speed and feel (atm).
As with gmail the fastmail provider does read your email content to provide e.g. search (and in case of gmail who knows what more?). Both will hand out information with a lawful warrant. -- And as long as the government is reasonably sane [2] that's perfectly fine with me.
Government interception is not part of my threat model for email. Emails may relayed through intermediate servers I can't control and may or may not be encrypted in transit or storage along the way. If I want private communication I'm not going to use email (or probably the internet).
However a service not randomly shutting down or dropping support for open protocols _is_ part of my requirements for an email host.
Some years ago this was not possible in fastmail (or I didn't find it;) In addition: if you want to separate the domains, then mailbox/runbox have a low-cost plan (around €15/y, iirc) which doesn't exist in fastmail.
Seconded. The vast number of aliases you can create is fantastic - I'm using unique addresses for every site I register on. Given the features and storage space, Gandi webmail seems to be very good value for money.
Comparable email service? Not sure on what terms to compare. But take a look at the below privacy focused (or privacy respecting) services before you look at Fastmail (which can be quite expensive if you need multiple mailboxes):
Posteo.de (no custom domain support), runbox.com, mailbox.org, mailfence.com, migadu.com, mxroute.com (if you don't mind hosting in the U.S.), ProtonMail (needs a bridge software to use IMAP) and Tutanota (no IMAP support)
If you'd like to support the next generation JMap (which Fastmail develops), then getting a paid subscription on Fastmail could help.