There are plenty of web-based email service providers that you can use, but having an email address with your own domain will give you more credibility if you are running a business, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are limitations on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. In case you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP protocols, you won’t run into such problems and you will be able to use any program on your personal computer to access your email accounts, including Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail. You can even set up a mailbox on your smartphone. The difference between the two 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 onto your PC, unless you set up the program in such a way as to store a copy on the server.