I know a lot of people suggest Proton and it seems mostly fine, but their free plan does not offer SMTP access which I use for quite a few things and I don't like the idea of paying for an e-mail service because I'm broke and I don't like the idea of potentially losing my e-mail account because I couldn't afford it when it comes time to renew it.
There's Riseup which seems really nice, but it seems you need an invite from an existing user which is also a bummer for me. I took a quick glance at their site and it seems you can't request an account anymore either because they had an issue with spam accounts in the past. :(
Is there anything else that maybe I'm unaware of? or maybe someone here even has a Riseup account that'd be willing to invite me?
While you wait for someone to invite you to Riseup, use tuta.
FOSS and focused on privacy.
I've tried making an account with them in the past and they never seemed to let me past the manual verification process. They also don't support SMTP (even on their paid plans) which is the same reason I'm avoiding Proton since I use
git-send-emailquite a bit and I'd like to be able to continue using Thunderbird as well.I understand it. Look, this answer may clarify your concerns.
I understand why they do it, and it's not that I don't trust the clients they provide or whatever, I'm avoiding them because I wouldn't be able to use things like
git-send-emailwhich require you to have SMTP access.A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.