I pay for my e-mail so I don't have to delete anything and can find everything online anytime. This is important to me. Right now I have many GB's of photos, spreadsheets, texts etc online at Gmail, and I am reminded to pay for next years service asap. Problem is:

Gmail is often slow.
Gmail produces a lot of error messages that are not explained at all (17, 93, 500, 717, 793, 000)
Gmail cannot properly handle e-mails with a lot of or large attachments. They are either not uploaded, or not sent, or are inaccessible when I need them. Google has not managed to fix that problem for me.

Of course, Gmail has the large advantage of a rational design. I keep backup accounts at many different services, and every time I log in to GMX or Yahoo I get all freaked out by the messy designs. I have to search for the logout-buttons and am overwhelmed by "naked women in expensive car crash"-news.

So where do I go when I want a reliable, fast and stable alternative to Gmail, with lots of space available? I will probably need a big company's ressources, but I haven't found a big name that uses a clean layout. And I'd rather change in the next couple of weeks than paying for one more year of Gmail.

Thanks in advance!

In my opinion, Gmail is the best free email account out there. My suggestion would be to solve the errors. The next time you get an error, post it (verbatum) here and we can help you with finding the solution.

Another suggestion would be to not use Gmail as a storage medium if your data is important/mission critical.

I agree that Gmail is the best e-mail solution I know of, free or not. Even though I am not satisfied, so I am looking for better providers that I don't know of. :)
Using online e-mail as storage is perfectly convenient. Dropbox & co. or simple servers are nice, but require either an installation of software on strange machines or a proper system. Carrying a stick is not always possible either, let alone losing physical hardware with lots of sensitive or important data.

That is why I am still looking for a good alternative to Gmail.