There’re lots of web-based email service providers that you can resort to, but using a mailbox with your own 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 restrictions on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP protocols, you will not bump into such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your personal computer to access your email messages, including Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail. You can even set up an email account on your phone. 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 onto your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to save a copy on the server.