[a_a_r_o_n]

fastmail.fm has a free account, but it's nowhere near the space that gmail provides. But it's good enough.

I originally used fastmail's free account just to have a backup smtp server for when gmail or whoever I was with at the time went down. gmail does go down, happened more than once to me.

fastmail has a $5/year account, which is probably where you want to start if you're concerned about "free."

I think their next level up is about $20/year.