Business email on your own domain: a plain guide

Free address or your own domain

There's nothing wrong with a free email address, and plenty of good contractors run on one. But an address like name@yourcompany.com has some practical advantages:

• It matches. The same name is on your truck, your website and your estimates, so it's easier for customers to tell the email came from you.
• You keep it when staff change. If your office manager leaves, office@yourcompany.com stays with the business. You reset the password or forward it to the next person. A personal address leaves with the person, along with the customer conversations in it.
• You can set up roles. Addresses like estimates@ or billing@ can go to one person today and another next year.
• You can change providers. The address belongs to your domain, not to the mail company, so you can switch mail services and keep the same address.

The catch: it all depends on your domain. If the domain lapses or someone else controls it, the email goes with it. Read owning your domain and website first.

How to set it up

1. Pick a mail service. Business email is usually sold per mailbox, per month, and some domain and hosting companies include basic mailboxes.
2. Decide on the addresses. Keep it short: one for each person who writes to customers, plus one shared address such as info@ or office@.
3. Have whoever manages your domain add the mail records described below.
4. Send test messages to and from a few outside addresses, and check they land in the inbox, not the spam folder.
5. Update your website, Google Business Profile, estimates and invoices. Keep the old address forwarding for a good while.

The three records, one line each

These are settings on your domain, not on your computer. Receiving mail services check them to help decide whether a message that claims to be from you is real.

• SPF: a list of the services allowed to send email for your domain.
• DKIM: a digital signature on each message, so the receiver can check it came from your domain and wasn't changed on the way.
• DMARC: instructions for what receivers should do with mail that fails those checks, and where to send reports about it.

Setting all three correctly makes it harder for scammers to fake your address, and it can help your real messages get delivered. It doesn't mean every message reaches the inbox. You don't need to write the records yourself: your mail service publishes the exact values. Ask whoever manages your domain to add them and confirm they pass a test.

Don't forget the website form

Your quote form sends email too. If form messages land in spam or never show up, one common cause is that the website isn't on your domain's list of allowed senders. Send yourself a test request after any change to your domain, email or website. More in our guide to quote request forms.

Good habits

• A unique password and two-step login on every mailbox
• The owner holds the admin login for the mail service
• When someone leaves, change the password and forward the mailbox the same day

This guide is about everyday business email. Bulk marketing email has its own rules, so check with a lawyer for your situation before you send it.