Business email on your own domain: why and how

Business email is an address that ends in your own domain, such as office@yoursalon.com instead of salonmaria1987@gmail.com. If you already have a domain for your website, setting one up is easy: you choose an email service, add a few records to your domain's settings and start sending from the new address. In this article you will see why it is worth doing, how to set it up step by step, and the three things that most often go wrong.

Why a free mailbox is not enough

Free email works perfectly well for personal messages. For a business, though, it has a few weaknesses that your customers notice, even if they never mention them.

• Trust. When a quote arrives from renovations.ivan84@yahoo.com, you cannot tell whether a company or a random person sent it. An address on the company's domain shows straight away who the message is from, and it backs up what the customer has seen on your website.
• Consistency. Your domain is on your sign, your business cards, your website and your Google Business Profile. Email on the same domain completes the picture.
• The mailbox belongs to the business, not a person. If an employee leaves, orders@yourcompany.com stays. You forward it to a colleague and customers never notice anything changed.
• Freedom to switch. The address depends on your domain, not on the email provider. If you decide to move to another service one day, customers keep writing to the same address.

That is why the first condition is that the domain is registered to your business and you have access to it. If you are still choosing one, read how to choose a domain name for your business.

How it works: your domain says where email goes

You do not need to understand the technology, but one idea helps. Your domain's settings (its DNS) contain special records called MX records. They tell mail systems around the world where to deliver email for your domain [1]. When someone writes to you, their email system looks up those records and sends the message wherever they point.

This means your website and your email can live in different places. The site can be with one provider and the email with another; the domain simply says which is where. For more on the difference between a domain and hosting, see domain and hosting explained.

Where to keep your business email

There are three common options:

1. Email that comes with your hosting. Many hosting plans include mailboxes. It is convenient and usually costs nothing extra, but check how much storage you get, whether there is spam protection and how well it works on your phone.
2. A major business email service. Google Workspace (Gmail with your domain) and Microsoft 365 (Outlook with your domain) are the most widely used. You get a familiar inbox, phone apps, a calendar and shared documents.
3. A personal service with your own domain. If you work alone and already use an iPhone, Apple lets you use up to five of your own domains, with up to 10 addresses each, with an iCloud+ subscription [2]. For a team, a service built for businesses is more practical.

For a salon, restaurant or workshop with two or three people, the first or second option is usually enough. What matters is choosing something you will use every day, including on your phone.

How to set it up, step by step

1. Decide which addresses you need. Usually one for all enquiries (office@ or info@) and one per person (maria@). The shared address can be delivered to several people.
2. Create the account with your chosen service and confirm that you own the domain. The service will show you which records to add.
3. Add the MX records at the company where you bought your domain. Google advises removing old MX records before adding the new ones, because email might not work correctly if old records stay. It can take up to 72 hours for the change to be recognised everywhere [1].
4. Switch on SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These three records prove that email from your domain really comes from you. More on them in the next section.
5. Test. Send a message from the new address to a personal mailbox and back. Check that it does not land in spam.
6. Update your address everywhere. On your website, your Google profile, Facebook, your invoices and your business cards.

Email is not part of your website, but it lives on the same domain. Every change to your website's DNS records has to keep your email records intact.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC: keeping your email out of spam

By design, internet email does not check that the sender is who they claim to be. Microsoft explains that this is exactly why scammers can forge the sender's address, and that SPF, DKIM and DMARC are the standards that stop it [3]:

• SPF lists which servers are allowed to send email for your domain.
• DKIM adds a digital signature to each message, so the recipient can see nobody changed it on the way.
• DMARC says what should happen to a message that fails those checks, and where to send reports.

This is no longer optional. Starting February 1, 2024, Gmail requires everyone who sends email to Gmail accounts to set up at least SPF or DKIM for their domain, and the rules are stricter still for senders of more than 5,000 messages a day [4][5]. Without these records, your quote may end up in the customer's spam folder, or not arrive at all.

If you send a newsletter to your customers, your newsletter service needs to be included in these records too.

The three most common mistakes

• A website change that wipes out email. Someone points the domain at a new website, deletes the "unneeded" records, and the next day email stops. Before touching DNS, write down every record. Details in how to move your domain to a new website.
• Only one person has access. The email and domain accounts belong to a former employee, or to whoever built the website years ago. Give admin access to at least two people in the business.
• A forgotten renewal. If the domain expires, both the website and the email stop. Turn on automatic renewal.

In short

Business email is a small step that makes your business look more serious from the very first message. You need a domain in your own name, an email service you will use every day, correct MX records and the three authentication records. Do it properly once and you will hardly have to think about it again. If you are preparing a new website, add email to what to prepare before a new website.

At Studio V1 the domain, hosting and SSL certificate are included in the monthly subscription of about €50, and when we launch your website we make sure the records your email depends on stay intact. If you have a question, get in touch.

References

1. Google Workspace Admin Help. "Set up MX records for Google Workspace." knowledge.workspace.google.com
2. Apple Support. "Use Custom Email Domain with iCloud Mail." support.apple.com/102540
3. Microsoft Learn. "How email authentication works in Microsoft 365." learn.microsoft.com
4. Gmail Help. "Email sender guidelines." support.google.com/a/answer/81126
5. Google Blog. "Gmail introduces new requirements to fight spam." blog.google