Icloud email works fine. With icloud plu$, you can alias fake email addresses that forward to your inbox and can be deactivated if and when they collect spam.

Firefox said on the most recent update that it also offers email aliases (but forward to what? I didn't check)

There are also some security features (in settings) standard.

I tried to stop message threading, but Apple Mail still offers "context", which tucks a previous message below the current one. In my case, I replied to an individual in a group message, and they replied to me individually, but it looked for all hell like the reply was to the group, which was an embarrassing optical illusion.

I really ask email to do as litte as possible.

A lot of my (extremely long) Apple experience consists of turning off gratuitous features that interfere with my workflow. But mail is reliable, and also accessible at icloud.com (log in) if you enable icloud web access.