Love the point about it being a “balance”. A lot of us are cautious about privacy because we’re technophiles who understand how our data is being harvested and exploited, but are still passionate about new & useful tech, and want to take advantage of it. Part of my philosophy is giving in to specific tech ecosystems that I like, and just accepting the privacy downsides. I use an Android phone, which is on me at all times, so to me it isn’t an issue to use Google Home devices since they aren’t getting much (if anything) from those that they couldn’t easily grab from my phone already.

If you want free options, I often use MailEnable and hMailServer in lab environments. Also a free Azure developer trial includes some M365 licenses, and it pretty much always auto-renews every 90 days (I’ve had a few tenants going for YEARS now)