There’re many web-based email providers that you can use, but using an email with your own domain name will grant you more credibility if you are running a company, for instance, not to mention that with web-based email services there are limitations on the size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP email retrieval protocols, you will not stumble upon 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 a mailbox on your phone. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed locally at your end, but remains on the email server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded to your personal computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.