There’re a lot of web-based email providers that you can resort to, but having an email address with your own personal domain name will provide you with more credibility if you are running a company, for instance, not to mention that with web-based email services there are limits on the maximum size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 protocols, you will not run into such problems and you’ll be able to use any software program on your personal computer to access your emails, including Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. You can even set up a mailbox on your phone. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed locally at your end, but remains on the email server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded to your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to save a copy on the server.