You’re not ignorant, and you don’t need to apologize. I would stay away from Proton because of the political views of the CEO. They pretend to be a secure Swiss company but: 1. I don’t think they are that secure because email can NEVER be secure, it’s an old piece of shit protocol, and pretending otherwise is a lie (unless you use PGP but no one uses PGP except some secure companies), and 2. You don’t lick the boots of any president outside of your own country.

I would advise you to get the email that you want to subscribe to in the future (so that you won’t have to switch in the future), and try not to fill your inbox too much. I’m an “inbox zero” guy though so take that with a grain of salt. The content of my emails are stored in my NAS, put in a calendar, and/or sent to the trash. I hate emails a bit but I have to use them.

Most free accounts have the same features, you can also open an account on each provider anyway and see the one that you prefer. Anyway, Tuta seems OK, they changed their domain name recently and I guess they won’t do that again in the near future.