There are many web-based mail service providers that you can resort to, but having an email address with your own domain will give you more credibility if you have a company, for example, not to mention that with web-based email services there are restrictions on the maximum size of the attachments that you can receive or send. In case you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 email delivery 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 messages, including Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. You can even set up an email account 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 server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded on your personal computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to save a copy on the server.