Many servers provide free email accounts. Some of them also provide you their free Instant Messengers (IMs) and other serevices. Some are given here.
There are three best emails for free


Hotmail.com
Mail.yahoo.com
Gmail.com


All there of above give you instant messengers for free.
There are other servers who provide you with email redirection which means that you can make your email addresses but any email recieved will be automatically forwarded to your email (say yahoo) account.
Specially if your yahoo email in long and difficult to tell others than you can use this email redirect option of following servers.


Mail.com
Pakwatan.com