In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

because isp based services are temporary, you leave the isp, they stop working, isp's can also at a whim stop those services

Same goes for the non-ISP Hotmail type email services (I won't call them Webmail cuz they are not just that) or they can start charging for them out of the blue.

Not all ISP provided mailboxes cease when you leave. E.g. Orange & Tiscali (& by implication TT) continue to work w/out an Internet connection from that ISP.

In essence, you are always at the mercy of the provider, even the paid-for hosting ones.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In essence, you are always at the mercy of the provider, even the paid-for hosting ones.

But of course in the case of owning a domain name, the fate of the email address always lies with the domain owner.

history suggests you wrong, these hotmail/gmail services have been around for a long time and are run by the biggest companies in the world.

I cant see either yahoo, hotmail or gmail ceasing free email services for at least a decade, they will probably only do so if something new pops up making email obselete. Personally I dont use them for any private stuff, as own domain is the best way to go, but I do use them for forum registration's, mailing lists etc.

As olivier said with paid hosting provider's if they close up shop its no big deal, you just move the domain, so will have tenporary downtime due to dns updates but thats it, and of course one can make their own email services redundant having backup MX, so if a mail provider goes down, is no downtime at all.