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?
The reason for that is due to their encryption, you need something from them at some point to actually decrypt emails before they reach your device. If you're on linux you can look at the hydroxide and peroxide projects on github