Mullvad, IVPN, and AirVPN all support crypto. They all do not require email accounts, too.

I do not recommend Proton for many reasons.

They support Israel.

https://proton.me/support/protonmail-israel-radware

https://protonvpn.com/blog/israel-vpn-servers/

They supported the 2020 Hong Kong protests.

https://protonvpn.com/blog/hong-kong-servers

This comment from Lemmygrad explains why Proton may be a honeypot and to be wary of VPN services in general.

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/361523

Here is a list of potential issues with ProtonMail (including their onion site deanonymizing Tor users when they create an account by redirecting them back to their .com address):

https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/

Some practical reasons I don't recommend Proton

Port-forwarding on linux is shoddy.

Proton treats Linux and its open source community as second-class citizens.

ProtonMail Android app is slow as hell. Takes several minutes to load an email and is basically unusable.

3+ year old issues never get fixed: https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge/issues/180

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/3306884

I want to get rid of ProtonMail eventually because they may be a honeypot.

Protonmail Behaves like a CIA/NSA “Honeypot”

Protonmail has an Onion domain that allows users to visit their site using the TOR browser. Protonmail even has an SSL cert for that onion address even though it’s completely unnecessary. When a user makes a new account with Protonmail on TOR they are re-directed from Protonmail’s “.onion” to “.com” address. This breaks your secure encrypted connection to their onion address, enabling your identification. There are absolutely no technical reasons for this feature. In fact, the only other websites that operate like this are suspected NSA/CIA Honeypots.

This is a huge security issue that was either created because Protonmail is managed by Particle physicists who do not understand computer security OR they have been forced to operate their website in a similar way as CIA/NSA honeypots. Both possibilities are serious concerns.

https://encryp.ch/blog/disturbing-facts-about-protonmail/

I'm planning to self-host my own email service, but that comes with its own problems, including major email services banning most IPs that are not other mainstream email providers for the sake of "spam protection".

https://vadosware.io/post/its-never-been-easier-or-harder-to-self-host-email/

https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

To hopefully counter this and to have a separate email for payments required to be able to host my own email service, I have an email on macaw.me and monocles.de (about monocles).

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/3307267

Tutanota mail is an alternative to Protonmail, but you can't use another email client like Thunderbird. There's some more options listed in this link:

https://www.privacyguides.org/en/email/

As I suggested before, macaw.me offers free email, and monocles.de offers free and paid encrypted email (both use Roundcube webmail).

Here's a list of email providers that work with Delta Chat:

https://providers.delta.chat/

Here's a list of email providers that work with dismail.de:

https://dismail.de/serverlist.html

I have been on the search for another larger and more developed email provider as a backup for instances when I can't use my other emails because they are blocked by some services or an entity I need to interact with. Here's a list of email providers I have managed to find for you:

cock.li (Vulgar, but has less vulgar domain name options, and they claim to be more transparent and honest, but I get some right-wing libertarian vibes from this service as I learned about it from Mental Outlaw (yeah, I know I watch some cringey tech channels, but I learn some helpful device from them, which is the only reason why I still watch them on occasion))

Fastmail (Proprietary, but they contribute to open source projects, and their JMAP standard project is pretty interesting)

Forward Email (Free/paid and open source, including the backend, and quantum-safe encrypted)

Mailbox.org (Proprietary)

Maildrop (Free and open source throwaway email service)

Migadu (Proprietary, but built with open source software and has some open source repositories (GitHub), but forced free tier users to switch to a paid tier within one month during the pandemic)

MXroute (Proprietary, but built with open source software and has some open source repositories (GitHub))

Runbox (Proprietary, but built with open source software and has some open source repositories (GitHub))

Swisscows.email

systemli.org (Apparently it's only available by invite link, and you have to be a leftist and know someone willing to give you an invite link)

Zoho Mail (Proprietary, but has some open source repositories (GitHub), have a good reputation, and also provides services such as an office suite, though their services are business oriented)

Keep in mind I haven't done much research on these email services to be able to recommend them. I am posting whatever I find, and hopefully someone may be able to make a comment or you will be able to research more about them to see if they fit your needs.

Here's a short list of email providers:

https://github.com/cdransf/awesome-email

I'm going to post this as it lists some email resources, testing tools, etc. even though the curated list is more intended for self-hosting email and email design:

https://github.com/jonathandion/awesome-emails

For VPNs, I would suggest using:

Mullvad

IVPN

I probably recommend ForwardEmail as that is what I am switching to soon, but I heard some of its security features and claims are a bit gimmicky, and SQLite may not be scalable if you have a lot of email with large attachments (this would be a large company's worth of email, so small groups and normal users would likely be fine). I may consider self-hosting my email (at least to archive my mail) as well using Stalwart, and it's built in Rust and can use different databases like SQLite and MySQL but more importantly PostgreSQL.

If you care about languages the VPNs I recommended are built in, I saw Mullvad is built in Rust, IVPN is built in Go, and AirVPN, which I have now for torrents because it can do port forwarding, is built in C#.

Mullvad is cheaper than IVPN, and both are nearly the same.