There are many alternatives of the caliber. Fastmail for example. Probably the problem is that you are expecting an alternative that is exactly like Gmail but if that's the way you judge alternatives you will never find one you accept.
+1 for FastMail. Its interface is beautiful and blazingly fast (while GMail is unusably slow on my machine). It integrated trivially with my personal domain, including federated XMPP.
GMail jumped the shark when they forced the new interface on everyone, killing usability in the process. It doesn't deserve my eyeball time any more.
