In case email messages are a key part of your electronic correspondence with business associates or relatives, you may be better off using an email account with your very own personal domain name and a mail service provider that supports the IMAP and POP3 email retrieval protocols, rather than using a web-based email service that entails restrictions as to the maximum size of the attachments. Thus, you will be able to check your email messages on any desktop or mobile device using any software – Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook, and so on. With the IMAP protocol, you’ll be able to see the email messages locally at your end, but they will be on the server all the time, while with POP3, all email messages will be downloaded to the device, unless you choose a copy to be kept on the email server. Plus, you’ll be able to use plenty of other handy options – contact groups, calendars, and so on, not to mention that in case there’s a temporary issue with your Internet service, you can still examine your emails since they will be on your desktop or handheld device.