Others have said something similar, but I'll put my thoughts for completeness:

* Get your own domain so you can move it if necessary;

* Download all your email regularly ... don't rely on the host storage;

* The above is as a backup ... if you get locked out of a host you can point your domain somewhere else, but you risk losing existing data;

I work almost exclusively locally, downloading everything, but still have the webmail interface for when it's more convenient.