When setting up an email address for your business, you’ll have a lot of decisions to make.
- Who will provide the service?
- Should you use your own name in the email address, the business name, or both?
- If you’re the only employee, is one business email address enough?
There’s one decision that should be easy: whether to use a domain email address or a generic one.
A proper business email address should include your business’ domain name (i.e., @yourcompany.com). That’s how you can project professionalism and represent your company as a legitimate and well-run business.
Creating a domain name for a website is one of the early steps most small business owners take. It’s how people find a company on the web, and it’s a central part of brand identity.
Some business owners decide not to set up a domain email address, but that’s a missed opportunity. Having all the branding power of a business domain name and then using a gmail.com or an outlook.com email address is an easy mistake.
This article will explain why a domain email address is better for your business than a generic one. It’ll cover the core benefits, like improved branding and the ability to set yourself apart from the competition. We’ll also compare a business domain email address to a generic one concerning privacy, security, accessibility, and portability.
We’ll wrap up with some tips on how you can come up with the perfect, professional domain email address for your business.
But before we do that, let’s talk about what a professional email address is and how you can make one.
- What is a Professional Email Address?
- The Power of a Domain Email Address
- Why Is It Important To Have A Professional Email Address
- Domain Email Addresses vs. Generic Email Addresses
- How to Make a Professional Email Address
- How to Choose a Professional Email Address
- How to Get a Professional Email Address
- How to Make a Professional Email Address When Your Name is Taken
- Boost Your Business with a Domain Email Account
What is a Professional Email Address?
Our email address is the online identity we use to make contact. Whether personal, educational, or work-related, an email address is necessary. However, it’s essential to have a different email account for various purposes to avoid chaos.
A professional email or a branded email address is mainly used to handle your business-related contacts. It’s a way for your colleagues, associates, or clients to connect with you professionally, but an email address only becomes professional if it includes your domain. When the email is based on your domain, it clears the confusion, making it evident that you’re conducting serious business.
Apart from it being a tool to show professionalism, a professional email address based on a domain is very powerful.
The Power of a Domain Email Address
One of the first challenges a small business owner faces is establishing a firm foundation of credibility. It’s critical to be viewed as a real business by potential customers.
What are some things that make people see a business as real?
The most common expectation is that a company will have a business name, some level of branding (like marketing materials that include the company name and logo), and a website.
Fifty years ago, the first item on that list would have been a brick-and-mortar business address, but today, a company needs to have a website to appear legitimate. Your website will be your domain name – something like yourbusiness.com.
In many ways, that domain name is the face of your business. It includes your company’s name, how people find you on the web, and one more place it can work for you every day: at the end of your business email address.
Using a business domain for your email will play a huge part in establishing your business’ credibility.
Why It’s Important To Have A Professional Email Address
Aside from being an assertive communication and professionalism tool, a branded email address is important for multiple reasons.
It Projects Professionalism
Unlike many business decisions, choosing between a business domain email and a free email is black and white. Using a business domain email address is a baseline requirement if you want your company to come off as professional.
When you provide your business email address to customers and prospects, don’t expect them to be impressed by the fact that you use a business domain email. Doing so is more about avoiding the alternative – using a free email account for your business purposes is a terrible mistake.
Which of the following email addresses seems more professional – jdoe@acmeplumbing.com or acmeplumbing@gmail.com?
Using a Gmail account makes customers and prospects wonder if your business is more a side project than a serious business. Using a business domain account gives people the impression that you take your business seriously and have set up a dedicated communication channel to serve your customers.
You Stand Out from the Competition
Using a free email account for business looks awful. That’s common knowledge. But there will always be a few companies that didn’t get the memo.
By using business domain email, you can differentiate yourself from your less-savvy competitors. They may have figured out ways to engage prospects to generate new business, but using a free email account will be a red flag, raising questions about how seriously they take their business.
For some people, seeing that generic email address will make them move on to a different company – one like yours that has a professional image, complete with a domain email address.
It Establishes Your Brand
Unless you have a company like Starbucks, where a green mermaid logo is all it takes to convey brand identity, it’s your business name that people relate to first. Your company’s name serves as the primary element of your brand identity.
If your company name is part of your domain name (as it should be), all its branding power is passed to the domain name and every business email address.
Every pair of eyes that sees your business name, whether on your website, in a Twitter post, or on a business card, makes one more person aware of your company’s existence. Since that’s the initial step in every first purchase, it’s critical for businesses trying to grow their customer base.
Your company name is your most useful branding tool, and a great place to use it is in your business email address.
Returning to the basic branding goal discussed above – getting your business name in front of new people – it’s unimaginable to pass up on the chance to have your business email address work for your brand. Your business email address, all by itself, has the power to establish a brand identity. Not only does it include your company name, but it also gives people a way to contact you.
A business owner who opts for a generic email address misses a huge opportunity. While they may include their business name in the address, that “@gmail.com” at the end will seem bush-league and be a turn-off to potential clients.
Domain Email Addresses vs. Generic Email Addresses
As discussed, a domain email address improves the credibility of your business. In contrast, a business email address ending in yahoo.com or gmail.com, for example, will give prospective customers doubts about how you run your company. A business domain email address lets people know you have an established operation that you take seriously, and it can be a valuable tool in generating brand awareness.
In this section, we’ll go over some of the other ways that using business domain email is a better choice than using a free email account.
Privacy
One thing you give up when using a free email service, like those offered by Google and Microsoft, is privacy. That’s not the case when your web host stores your business email. Where Google would require that you acknowledge a user agreement that limits your email privacy, the agreement you enter into with your web hosting provider goes the other way, guaranteeing rock-solid privacy and security for your business email.
Where would you feel better about storing your company email on a server that you have no control over or on one that you’re paying to be maintained securely? Savvy business owners know that using a business domain email handled by their trusted web host is a better way to go.
Accessibility
It’s common for business owners to monitor their email from multiple devices. They need to stay in touch with customers no matter where they are, so accessing incoming emails on their phones is critical. Managing mailing lists and other administrative tasks may be done in a desktop application.
Keeping up with business communication using a generic business email account can get messy. If you have a personal Gmail account and a business Gmail account, emails from customers might get lost in a sea of personal emails.
But, if you use a business domain email account, it’s easier to organize your communications, keeping business and personal emails completely separated. One thing that can make that task even more accessible is to dedicate a favourite email app to your business email, creating an isolated business environment that can be accessed across all your devices.
Portability
If you set up your free business email account with Yahoo, for example, and later decided you wanted to use Gmail, you’d have to change your business email address and try to let all your customers know about the change. Some will miss the announcement, and you’d lose them as customers when they try to reach out to you using the old email address.
A business domain email address doesn’t have that problem. It’s portable. You’re free to switch to a different web hosting provider whenever you choose, and you can take your domain email address with you because you own your domain name.
Accessibility
It’s common for business owners to monitor their email from multiple devices. They need to stay in touch with customers no matter where they are, so accessing incoming emails on their phones is critical. Managing mailing lists and other administrative tasks may be done in a desktop application.
Keeping up with business communication using a generic business email account can get messy. If you have a personal Gmail account and a business Gmail account, emails from customers might get lost in a sea of personal emails.
But, if you use a business domain email account, it’s easier to organize your communications, keeping business and personal emails completely separated. One thing that can make that task even more accessible is to dedicate a favourite email app to your business email, creating an isolated business environment that can be accessed across all your devices.
Portability
If you set up your free business email account with Yahoo, for example, and later decided you wanted to use Gmail, you’d have to change your business email address and try to let all your customers know about the change. Some will miss the announcement, and you’d lose them as customers when they try to reach out to you using the old email address.
A business domain email address doesn’t have that problem. It’s portable. You’re free to switch to a different web hosting provider whenever you choose, and you can take your domain email address with you because you own your domain name.
Security
It’s common for business emails to contain confidential information. Your customers expect you to keep that information secure, but that’s hard to promise if you use a free email service. Providers of free email services typically have a huge user base, so they present an attractive target to hackers.
It’s also possible that you could lose access to your account. Maybe the servers go down at the worst possible time, right as you’re working through an issue with a valued customer. Perhaps a case of mistaken identity causes your account to be suspended.
You can avoid frustration like that by having your business email accounts managed on your web hosting provider’s servers. You’re paying them, you have full control over your account, and, unlike with a free email provider, keeping your data safe and available is an extremely high priority for your web host.
When you use a business domain email address, you’ll know exactly what security measures are taken by your host, and you’ll have the power to implement additional security as you see fit. One way to ensure that your domain email address is secure and reliable is by using email verification software to authenticate and validate your email addresses.
How to Make a Professional Email Address
When coming up with the best business email address, it’s a good idea to split the task into two parts: what comes before the @ and what comes after the @.
The last part is a no-brainer, it should be your business’ domain name:
@yourcompany.com
But what about the first part of the address?
This is where you have a chance to craft the precise image of professionalism you want to achieve with your business email address.
Make that “addresses,” plural, because it’s recommended that you create multiple business email addresses. Not only will that help you sort incoming emails into helpful groupings, but it gives customers the impression that your company is fully staffed and carefully managed through departmental divisions.
The most important email address will be that of the business owner. Convention dictates using the first Initial and last name, or both names (i.e., jdoe@yourcompany.com or johndoe@yourcompany.com).
The main purpose of this address is to serve as your personal business email address. When you provide it to customers and prospects, they’ll know they have a direct line to you, the company’s owner.
Don’t use your nickname or add any numbers or special characters. To stress that you’re a hands-on business owner who will personally address customer concerns, be sure to use some part of your real name; avoid anything impersonal, like owner@yourcompany.com.Another important factor is the case. While the domain name portion of your email address is not case sensitive, the part that appears before the @ is case sensitive. If you set up JDoe@yourcompany.com and someone tries to reach you at jdoe@yourcompany.com, you’ll never get the email. Play it safe and use only lower-case letters in your business email addresses.
Once you have the owner’s email address worked out, it’s time to think about other addresses that might be useful. Don’t overdo it, because too many addresses will be hard to keep track of. If you can think of one or two alternative email addresses that either help in organization, make your company look more established, or both, go ahead and create them.
Some common examples are:
- support@yourcompany.com
- shipping@yourcompany.com
- customerservice@yourcompany.com
Sticking with a traditional email address format for staff members (using some part of the peoples’ real names) and creating a few department-specific addresses can help you present a professional image to customers and prospects, giving your company an air of validity that businesses with a generic email account won’t have.
How to Choose a Professional Email Address
The style of the email address you should choose depends on the domain you have registered for your business. If your company name is your domain name and email address, then choosing it is not going to be a big problem. You can mix and match it with your first name, last name, initials, and company name.
You can single out the positions with extra authority to showcase that in the email address.
Here are some professional email address suggestions.
- firstname.lastname@yourdomain.com (For example, john.doe@yixndustries.com)
- firstname@yourdomain.com (For example, john@yixndustries.com)
- lastname@yourdomain.com (For example, doe@yixndustries.com)
- Initials@yourdomain.com (For example, jr@yourdomain.com)
- Initial.lastname@yourdomain.com (For example, j.doe@yourdomain.com)
- job@yourdomain.com (For example, ceo@yourdomain.com)
- department@yourdomain.com (For example, sales@yourdomain.com)
- jobfirstname@yourdomain.com (For example, ceojohn@yourdomain.com)
Typically, anything that has your name or initials is good, followed by the name of your domain. In the case where your own name is the domain name registered for the company, you can use filler words like “contact” or “mail” before “@” to create an email address. In that case, here is what a professional email address would look like:
- contact@yourname.com (For example, contact@johndoe.com)
- mail@yourname.com (For example, mail@johndoe.com)
- me@yourname.com (For example, me@johndoe.com)
- job@yourname.com (For example, ceo@johndoe.com)
- initials@yourname.com (For example, jr@johndoe.com)
How to Get a Professional Email Address
Once you’ve decided on how you’re going to create a professional email address, the next thing you need to focus on is where to get it from.
The process of getting your professional email can be a bit overwhelming, but we’ve broken it down into steps so you can easily follow along.
Step 1: Get Your Domain Registered
If you already have a registered domain name, you can skip this step.
To register your company name as a domain, you need to go to a reliable domain registrar and get it done. Or, if you’re very early to this and haven’t even gotten web hosting, decide on a reliable web host and get your domain registered from there.
To know more about registering a domain name, check out our article all about domain registration.
Step 2: Create Your Google Workspace Account
Google Workspace is the best solution to get a professional domain-based email account. A lot of reliable web hosts provide professional emails using Google Workspace. HostPapa also provides Google Workspace solutions for your business emails.
Alternatively, you can head to Google Workspace by yourself and follow these steps:
- Click on Get Started.
- Fill out the required info accurately and click Next Step.
- Fill out your name and existing email address, and click on Next Step.
- You’ll be asked to confirm whether you have a registered domain for your business or not. If you don’t already have a registered domain, you can get it from Google Domain before proceeding.
- If you already have a domain, go to the next step, enter your domain, double-check it, and click on Next Step.
- Create a username and password to finalize your Workspace account and pass the authentication process.
- Finally, confirm your payment plans.
Step 3: Verify Your Google Workspace Domain
Now that you have a Google Workspace account, go to Google Admin Console and log in with your credentials.
To set up your Google Workspace, view Google’s tutorial or follow these steps:
- Verify your Google Workspace domain.
- Click on Verify to go to domain verification options.
- The default option is to add a TXT record to the DNS records of your website and select it. This won’t affect your website or domain in any way. Google will generate a code starting with google-site-verify. Copy this code.
- Access your DNS record from the hosting provider in the new tab and click on Add a New DNS Record. This opens a tab where you can add the record you just copied.
- Select TXT from the Type menu and paste the verification code. Click Add DNS Record and return to Google Workspace. If you’re not familiar with DNS records, check out the complete guide to DNS records.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the Google Workspace signup page and click on Verify my domain to complete the verification process.
Don’t worry if Google takes a while to authenticate your domain.
Step 4: Add Google Workspace Users
Assuming you’re not the only employee of your company, you should add usernames to the Google Workspace.
First, click on Create Accounts. Fill out the information of the new user, and click on Add New User. Repeat this process to add all of your staff members to the Workspace.
If your company already has an email address or if you already use a professional email service, make sure that the username of each member matches the one you have put in Workspace profiles.
Step 5: Activate Gmail for Your Workspace
In the final step, click on Activate to activate the Gmail service for the Workspace accounts.
The next page will contain the following MX records:
- aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 1
- alt1.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 5
- alt2.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 5
- alt3.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 10
- alt4.aspmx.l.google.com / priority = 10
Open a new tab and access your hosting provider’s DNS tool, or just reopen the DNS tool tab from earlier if you haven’t already closed it. Copy-paste this code into a DNS record.
When you’re done, return to your Google Workspace activation tab and click Activate. It will take a moment to verify. If it doesn’t verify on the first try, click on Retry Activation.
Once the changes are detected, you’ll be taken to the final screen.
Your setup is now finished and you can log in to your Gmail and start sending emails from your professional email address.
How to Make a Professional Email Address When Your Name is Taken
While making a professional or branded email address, you might realize a username you want to use is already taken. We have a solution for that.
The best approach to handle this issue is to combine your company name with the location your company is based in.
Not only will this approach solve your email problem, but it will also help people find your website with SEO for local searches and on Google business listings. That’s why a lot of businesses are called town name car wash or town name plumber.
That being said, you may not have a single location you’re based in, or you might not be planning to stay in your current location for a long time. In that case, you need to be a bit more creative.
The approach to handle that issue is mixing and matching your initials and names or adding your initials or name to the company name. Check out different variations of this and see which one sounds best to you.
Boost Your Business with a Domain Email Account
The difference between using a business domain email address and a generic one is plain to see – the former will have a positive impact on your company’s image, while the latter will harm it.
An address like johndoe@yourcompany.com looks professional; one like yourcompany@gmail.com doesn’t, it’s that simple.
If you were considering hiring one of two companies, and one had a domain email address while the other had a generic one, it’s likely that you’d be more impressed by the company with the domain address. Your prospects and customers will have the same reaction when comparing your company to your competitors.
Using a domain email address helps promote an image of professionalism and credibility, sending a signal to people that you take your business seriously. It helps establish and maintain branding for your business and separates you from competitors who choose to use a free email account.
Add to those reasons the increased privacy, accessibility, portability, and security that come with a domain email account, and you can only arrive at one conclusion – setting up a domain email account is a smart move for your business.
Do you have a professional email address for your business or do you prefer sticking with the free services?