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There are plenty of free email services available to almost anyone that wants one. However, finding one that is professional and available can be difficult. There can also be a problem when you let someone else control and store all your email correspondence. As in many cases where there is a problem there is a Google solution. For this problem that solution is Google Apps.

Google Apps provides email and other services on a domain that you own such as you@yourname.com. While the Google Apps portion of this solution is free (ie: ad supported) you will have to pay for the domain. There are numerous domain registers out there and costs can very. I use Dreamhost in part because one free domain registration is included with a year of webhosting service. You can register a domain but do not have to host a site on that domain. Dreamhost also makes it extremely simple to implement Google Apps on a domain registered with them.

It is important to note that by using Google Apps your email is stored on servers at Google. Therefore, it is important to backup your data incase the Google servers have problems. For this I uses Backupify, another solution that doesn’t require a Master Degree in Information Technology to implement. Backupify, does offer a free Personal plan that lets you backup to 2GB of data.

Another great thing about owning your own domain is that you are no longer dependent on your Internet Service Provider (ISP). You can seek out another ISP and not have to inform all your friends and colleagues that you have a new email address.

Of course there is also the possibility that at some point you may not be happy with Google Apps providing your email services. In this case all you would need to do is backup your email and make a few changes with domain registrar and your email could be running where ever you chose.

The ability to have an email address that you own for life is well worth the investment in owning your own domain.