If you use an email account with your very own personal domain name instead of a 3rd-party one, you’ll be able to make use of an email software app such as Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail to check and administer your email accounts. The advantage of using such apps is that they also offer other features, such as calendars and address books. There are two different email retrieval protocols that you can select from when you configure the application of your choosing to access your email account – POP3 and IMAP. With the first protocol, all email messages that are received will be downloaded onto your device – desktop or mobile, unless you decide to leave a copy on the mail server. With the second protocol, the email messages will be displayed at your end, but they will remain on the server all the time, so you can set up the email account on numerous devices and check the email messages from any location. You will also be able to access old email messages in case there’s an issue with your Internet service, which is an advantage over web-based email services.