Secure Email ?

Well here is the dilemma. Is Free Email safe or is a Paid service better and more secure. I recently read where Gmail accounts have been hacked. I don't wish to be one of these. I use 360v5 on my PC. Researching I see yahoo plus,hotmail plus, mobieme and others that are paid. I'm not looking for a recommendation on which is the best , I only want to know if free vs paid really makes a difference. I also get a lot of spam on my current email,it does have a pretty good spam filter so it is not overwhelming. There are quite a few paid services out there,which one is best is left for another discussion. To bad Norton doesn't have it's own Email server. I now leave it to the experts.