There are plenty of web-based email service providers that you can resort to, but having a mailbox with your own domain name will provide you with more credibility if you have a company, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are restrictions 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 come across such problems and you will be able to use any software program on your PC to access your mailboxes, including Thunderbird, Apple Mail or Outlook. You can even set up an email account on your mobile device. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the server, whereas with POP3, the message is downloaded onto your personal computer, unless you configure the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.