There’re plenty of web-based mail service providers that you can use, but using a mailbox with your own personal domain will give you more credibility if you have a company, for example, not to mention that with web-based email services there are restrictions on the maximum size of the attachments that you can send or receive. If you use an email service that supports the POP3 and IMAP email protocols, you won’t experience such problems and you will be able to use any software program on your PC to access your email accounts, including Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. You can even set up an email account 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 to your personal computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.