I have choosen this route because I was unhappy with Gmail and iCloud. It just seemed logical to me. However what I have noticed is that most providers just suck when it comes to email on mobile phones. Most use z-push which is a reversed engineered version of activesync, and I must say that it sucks. Also their webmail is horrendous compared to their free counterparts. When you take all that into account the only good email providers are Google (Google apps) and Microsoft (Exchange/ Ofice365).
I personally like Outlook.com but I hate the domain name (it's confusing for some people, especially in the country I live in ) and the hotmail domain carries a lot of baggage. If they alowed the use of a custom domain on Outlook.com (like they once did) I wouldn't think twice about switching.