There are lots of web-based mail service providers that you can resort to, but having an email account with your very own personal domain will give you more credibility if you are running a business, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are limits on the maximum size of the attachments that you can send or receive. In case you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP email protocols, you will not experience such problems and you will be able to use any program on your PC to access your email messages, including Outlook, Apple Mail 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 at your end, but remains on the mail server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded on your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.