There are plenty of web-based email providers that you can resort to, but using an email account with your very own personal domain name will provide you with more credibility if you are running a company, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are restrictions on the size of the attachments that you can receive or send. In case you use an email service that offers support for the POP3 and IMAP email retrieval protocols, you will not face such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your computer to access your emails, including Outlook, Apple Mail or Thunderbird. You can even set up an email account on your mobile 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 server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded to your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.