There are plenty of web-based email providers that you can resort to, but having an email address with your 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 limits on the maximum size of the attachments that you can send or receive. In case you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP email retrieval protocols, you won’t stumble upon such problems and you will be able to use any software program on your personal computer to check your mails, including Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. You can even set up a mailbox on your phone. The difference between the two protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the email server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded onto your personal computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.