That's not easier, that's the same but with a worse scale fit.
If you need free, you need free.
But if you can pay, you want to pay a vendor whose scale is such that you mean something to them while still being mature enough to rely on.
This applies to pretty much everything, not just email.
With Google and Apple, you service needs are overhead and with Google in particular, your value is entirely in them being able to monitor as much as they legally can about your activity.
With Fastmail, Protonmail, etc, you are a customer already and they're invested in making you a bigger happy cuatomer in the future. They have staff that will service your support tickets, you represent profit on their books, and the services they offer you are generally designed for your scale more precisely.
