In light of recent events, there's been a lot of chatter about leaving free e-mail services in favor of self-hosted e-mail. With self-hosted e-mail you have the
Email notifier supporting POP3, IMAP, SMTP, SSL, Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail, and many other web-based email services. Many options for notification alerts and very configurable.
A worldwide collaborative art project where volunteers handwrite strangers' emails and send physical letters to the intended recipients, free of charge.