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Now that email is such a standard way of communicating its important to get it working for you. At the basic level whoever you pay for your internet access will surely provide you with a free email address and this for many is perfectly adecuate. However if you change your internet service provider, depending who you are with you may lose your email address as this gets cancelled with your contract although not always straight away.
You can use a seperate webmail service and this seems to be the most popular as its also free with some providers offering a paid upgrade service for enhanced features. Some of these providers also allow whats called “pop / imap access” (you can use a program on your computer to collect the email for you, eg: Thunderbird or Outlook etc)
Here is a list of the most popular free web based options
Gmail by Google : pop access: Yes
Hotmail: Pop access: Yes
Yahoo mail: Pop access: Yes but requires a paid premium subscription
Aol mail: Pop access: Yes
Gmx : Pop access: Yes
All of these email services can easily be accessed using a modern mobile phone or smartphone as they are also known as.
Domain name email.
You will already be familliar with domain names as you see them everywhere eg, www.boots.com (boots chemist etc), these website addresses are called domain names and you can have one of your own.
They are not expensive and providing someone else has not beaten you to it you can have your own name ie, www.johnsmith.co.uk. With this you can then use the free webmail that comes with it (In most cases there is no advertising with this kind of webmail) and if offered use the pop access. In most cases you can have your own domain email for under £30 per year.
There are several companies offering this and one of the easiest is: