There’re a lot of web-based email service providers that you can use, but having an email address with your own personal domain will provide you with more credibility if you have 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 IMAP and POP3 email delivery protocols, you won’t experience such problems and you’ll be able to use any software program on your computer to access your email messages, including Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail. 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 onto your personal computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.