Actually, getting a paid email account is easy. Just about every hosting provider out there also offers an email address.
Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and some desktop client, this might not be a problem.
The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or CardDav provider. Your best bet is probably some hosted Exchange solution, which provides ActiveSync.
Web access is usually terrible though. If you're lucky, they provide roundcube, which is ok, but certainly inferior to Gmail. If you use IMAP and some desktop client, this might not be a problem.
The hard part is the calendar and contacts. I don't know of any CalDAV or CardDav provider. Your best bet is probably some hosted Exchange solution, which provides ActiveSync.