There’re numerous web-based email providers that you can resort to, but having an email address with your own domain will give you more credibility if you have a business, for example, not to mention that with web-based services there are limits on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. In case you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 email protocols, you will not bump into such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your personal computer to access your emails, including Apple Mail, Outlook or Thunderbird. You can even set up an email account 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, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded to your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to store a copy on the server.