There are many web-based email service providers that you can use, but having an email account with your very own personal domain will give you more credibility if you have a business, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are limits on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 email retrieval protocols, you won’t run into such problems and you’ll be able to use any software program on your computer to access your email accounts, including Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. You can even set up an email account on your smartphone. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded on your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to save a copy on the server.