There’re lots of web-based email providers that you can resort to, but having an email account with your very own personal domain will grant you more credibility if you have a business, for instance, 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 IMAP and POP3 email protocols, you will not stumble upon such problems and you will be able to use any software program on your PC to check your mails, including Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail. You can even set up an email account on your mobile device. The difference between the two protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed locally at your end, but remains on the mail server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded to your personal computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to leave a copy on the server.