There’re plenty of web-based email service providers that you can use, but having an email with your own personal domain name will grant you more credibility if you have a business, for example, not to mention that with web-based email services there are limitations on the size of the attachments that you can receive or send. If you use an email service that offers support for the POP3 and IMAP email delivery protocols, you won’t encounter such problems and you will be able to use any program on your computer to access your email accounts, including Thunderbird, Outlook 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, while with POP3, the message is downloaded on your computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to store a copy on the server.