I looked at this a while ago. But I discovered quite how tightly looped the apple eco system is. Without an iPhone or a Mac I can sign up for a free iCloud account, but bizarrely I cannot have a paid one.

Did you install iCloud on your Windows PC?

Can you use it for things like e-mail if everyone doesn't use Apple stuff?

For setup you may need iOS device at first but I don't think it is tied to it. I am using a lot of Apple devices so not a problem for me but maybe if you dont and do not have Apple ID.

If you're an iPhone/Mac user and already using iCloud+ for files/photo storage, this is a good solution as it won't cost you anything more (assuming you're happy to rely mainly on the iOS and Mac OS apps as the web-based mail client is terrible to use).

Is catch-all supported yet for custom email domains on iCloud+? That's really the only thing holding me back from it.