There are a lot of web-based email service providers that you can resort to, but having an email account with your own domain will give you more credibility if you have a business, for example, not to mention that with web-based services there are restrictions on the maximum size of the attachments that you can receive or send. If you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP protocols, you won’t face such problems and you’ll be able to use any software program on your personal computer to access your email accounts, including Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. You can even set up an email account on your mobile phone. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the mail server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded to your PC, unless you set up the program in such a way as to leave a copy on the server.