Where to host email?

Depending on where you host and register your domain, you can fairly easily have Google handle the email for you.

You can even register the domain through Google, who will handle the registration and pass it on to a third party registrar.

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=53929

Alternatively, you can register and host through a bunch of companies--I've had good experiences with GoDaddy--and have Google/Gmail handle the email.

Google will support 50 email accounts for free via their Personal edition.

Don't get sucked into spending a lot of money on a domain, email, and a Web site.

WordPress will be fine. Seriously.

I'm really tired of seeing people, especially writers, scammed.

Register your own domain yourself, in your own name. Don't let anyone else register under another name.

You need to own and control it.

Don't pay more than ten bucks or so a year for a .com domain registration.

Don't pay more than 60.00 / year for a Web host account/server for your site.

I use a separate ISP just for domain hosting and general email (separate from my website, I mean) - I had one web-hosting company go bust on me, way back, and lost access to my previous domain name for ages until I could get the paperwork sorted out.

I pay my current ISP, a long-established company, a modest fee for domain names and a few pounds a year for a POP box; email forwarding is free. On top of that I pay a fiver a month for web hosting (which comes with its own email accounts, as many as I want), but being a techie I need access to services that mean nothing to most people (like SSH access).

P.W. -- It's the Internet. All information is vulnerable. We take the same risks anywhere. Yahoo gets hacked. Small ISPs leak.