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?