There are plenty of web-based mail service providers that you can resort to, but using an email address with your own personal domain will provide you with more credibility if you have a business, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are restrictions on the size of the attachments that you can receive or send. If you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 protocols, you will not experience such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your personal computer to check your mails, including Thunderbird, Apple Mail or Outlook. You can even set up an email account on your mobile 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 personal computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to leave a copy on the server.