You may want to consider something like a web hosting account with 1and1.com (or some other cheap provider).
Right now their cheapest accounts are $1.50/month for 6 months. The std price is $3/month.
So, figuring it at the regular price ($36/yr), it's more money than most email accounts. However, even though I don't use mine for much of a website, I do use it for:
- FTP backups of important files; they support SFTP or FTPS (I forget which one) for secure transfers, and my backup program supports encrypted backups
- files accessible from anywhere; I use a free web file manager (phpXplorer) so I can upload/download files from anyplace that has Internet access. It's like a USB Flash drive that I don't have to carry around (note that this is not secure, so encrypt anything senstive before doing this)
- email access; POP3 and IMAP support. They also have a web interface that's admittedly not great. If I cared, I'd look into fixing this with a PHP script or something. Also, my email has *my* domain, so if I decide to move to another provider, I don't have to send out a change of address. Oh, and the domain name is included in the fee, which would cost about $10 otherwise.
Anyway, it's something to think about if you might have use for more than just email. Also, I'm mentioning 1and1 only because that's what I'm using. I'm sure there are plenty of other webhosting services that will provide similar or better.
