There are a lot of web-based email service providers that you can resort to, but having an email address with your very own personal domain will grant you more credibility if you are running a business, for example, not to mention that with web-based services there are limitations on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that offers support for the POP3 and IMAP email delivery protocols, you won’t stumble upon such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your personal computer to check your mails, including Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail. You can even set up an email account on your smartphone. The difference between the two protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the email server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded to your computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to store a copy on the server.