In this work some families of relativistic anisotropic charged fluid spheres have been obtained by solving the Einstein–Maxwell field equations with a preferred form of one of the metric potentials, and suitable forms of electric charge distribution and pressure anisotropy functions. The resulting equation of state (EOS) of the matter distribution has been obtained. Physical analysis shows that the relativistic stellar structure for the matter distribution considered in this work may reasonably model an electrically charged compact star whose energy density associated with the electric fields is on the same order of magnitude as the energy density of fluid matter itself (e.g., electrically charged bare strange stars). Furthermore these models permit a simple method of systematically fixing bounds on the maximum possible mass of cold compact electrically charged self-bound stars. It has been demonstrated, numerically, that the maximum compactness and mass increase in the presence of an electric field and anisotropic pressures. Based on the analytic models developed in this present work, the values of some relevant physical quantities have been calculated by assuming the estimated masses and radii of some well-known potential strange star candidates like PSR J1614-2230, PSR J1903+327, Vela X-1, and 4U 1820-30.