Plenty of small businesses run on an address like joesplumbing1984@gmail.com. It works, and it is free. It also tells every customer that the business is small, it cannot be handed on if you sell or retire, and it is tied to one person's personal account for ever. An address at your own domain fixes all of that for the cost of a coffee a month.
What a domain is
A domain is the name after the @ and the name in the website address: yourcompany.com. You rent it, for about $15 a year, from a registrar, and as long as you keep paying it is yours. Email at that domain, and a website at that domain, are separate services that you point the domain at.
If you already have a website, you already have a domain, and the email side is the only part left to set up.
Why it matters
- It looks established. jane@yourcompany.com is what customers expect from a business they will trust with money.
- It is portable. If you move from one email provider to another, the address does not change. Customers never need to know.
- It belongs to the business. When someone leaves, their address is redirected to whoever takes over. When the business is sold, the addresses go with it.
- It is safer. Business email services include protection against fraud and impersonation that a free address does not, and they let you set up the records that stop other people sending mail that appears to come from your domain.
Where the mailbox lives
The domain points to a mail service, and there are three sensible choices:
- Microsoft 365 is the usual choice for a business that uses Office. Our guide to which Microsoft 365 plan covers the options.
- Google Workspace is the business version of Gmail. Right for a business that already lives in Google's tools.
- The web host's own mail is often included with website hosting. It is cheap and it is adequate for a one-person business, but its spam filtering, reliability and support are a step down, and it is the first thing to outgrow.
Whichever you choose, the address stays the same if you later move to another.
The records that stop impersonation
Once mail is set up, three short records on the domain, called SPF, DKIM and DMARC, tell the world's mail servers which services are allowed to send mail as your domain. Without them, your messages are more likely to land in spam, and criminals can send mail that appears to come from you. Every mail provider has instructions for adding them, and it takes ten minutes. It is the step most small businesses skip, and the one that matters most for getting your mail delivered.
Moving your old email across
The messages, contacts and calendar in an old Gmail or other account can be imported into the new mailbox, so nothing is lost. Set the old address to forward to the new one, and put the new address on your website, invoices and signature. Keep the old one forwarding for a year; by then, everyone who matters will have the new address.
The one thing to protect
The registrar account, where the domain is renewed, is the most important login the business has. If it lapses, the domain can be bought by someone else, along with your email. Put the renewal on auto-pay, use a card that will not expire soon, set the contact address to one that is not at the domain itself, save the login in a password manager, and turn on two-step sign-in for it.
How long it takes
For a business with a domain already, an hour or two of setup and a day for the changes to spread. For one starting from scratch, an afternoon. We set this up for small businesses regularly, and handle the records, the migration and the devices.