I've been using G-Mail for about four years. I used to really admire it for its simplicity, but now I feel like I am getting Google+ shoved in my face every time I log in, so I am searching for an alternative. Just wondering if anyone here had some other recommendations.

Free or paid, willing to pay if price is reasonable for service

Why don't you use an email client like Thunderbird instead then? That way you can have all your email accounts in one place and don't need to worry about logging in each time or getting Google+ / other ads shoved in your face.

I use Gmail with it and my life is G+ free.

Hmm, I'll check it out.

Are u looking for free email?.Or paid?.If paid i can recommend fastmail.fm. Had paid account for years.Ultra reliable :).

Ironically hotmail actually has some of the highest ratings right now for free. Or for 30 bucks a year you can pay for email (for that you can get encryption capabilities built into your webmail if you want). If you really want free, hotmail is supposed to be just about the best right now, right alongside gmail.

I use fastmail too.

G+ is just the whole social thing that Google unifies into your Google Account. You don't need it if you don't want it. Here's a link on how to disable social features in Google

Thumbs up for Thunderbird.

Hotmail, have been using it for a long time now. I think with the newest policy change, every Google account will be upgraded to Google+, regardless whether you use Gmail directly, or access it through a third party application, and data for it will be gathered from all of Google's services.

Can somebody confirm / deny?

This is the new policy. All information from all Google services is now tied together, if you're still logged into GMail they're tracking you FaceBook style across all their services now.

Given how pervasive Google Analytics is (and if you don't believe it's in 95% of websites you visit, use Ghostery in Firefox for a week) they may be able to track you across the entire internet now, with 100% more consent now.

They look good. I think I'll make an account. I've been thinking about the fact that I could use a backup for my gmail service.

Definitely +1 for using Thunderbird or some other client for Gmail though, I don't believe they do much in the way of back ups.

I've been using GMX for about 15 years now. It's reliable, has a decent spam filter, and doesn't intrude on your privacy in the way Google does. The web page is full of ads, but you don't have to use it - personally I use a POP3 client to download and read my mail, I'm only logging into the web page when I don't have my netbook with me, with is rare.

There's also Mail.com, which is pretty old (I think it once was AOL's mailing service), but now has been bought by the company that also owns GMX. It worked when I tested it, but I didn't use it for long.

I hugely prefer e-mail clients over webmail, but I can't honestly recommend Thunderbird. In my experience it's just way too clumsy and slow (which is the usual Mozilla touch).

Easily the best e-mail client I've ever come across is the one built into Opera. It's a little advertised feature, but quite frankly it's one of the main reasons I use Opera as my primary browser. But you can just as well use it as a mail client only, should you wish to do so.

And as for the service, I have my own domain, and unlimited e-mail addresses as part of the server hosting. And really, it's not expensive at all, and not much more difficult to set up than a Gmail account. Free services are nice and all, but well, you get what you pay for.

Have a look at Fluent. It's not out yet, but you can try it with a gmail account

I use Opera mail for emails. It's build in into browser. So you don't need to change your email address, just use client, instead of checking your emails in browser.