If you use a mailbox with your own personal domain name and not a third-party one, you’ll be able to make use of an email application such as Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail to access and administer your email accounts. The advantage of using such applications is that you can also take advantage of other features, such as address books and calendars. There are two email retrieval protocols that you can select from when you set up the application of your choice to access your email account – POP3 and IMAP. With the first one, all email messages that are received will be downloaded on your device – desktop or mobile, unless you decide to leave a copy on the mail server. With the second protocol, the messages will be displayed at your end, but they will stay on the server at all times, so you can set up the email account on multiple devices and view the messages from any place. You will also be able to check old email messages if there is a predicament with your Internet access, which is an advantage over web-based email services.