There’re many web-based email providers that you can use, but using a mailbox with your own personal domain will provide you with 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 IMAP and POP3 protocols, you won’t encounter such problems and you’ll be able to use any program on your computer to check your email accounts, including Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail. 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 at your end, but remains on the email server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded on your PC, unless you set up the program in such a way as to store a copy on the server.