Business Email on Your Own Domain

If your business address is still companyname2019@gmail.com, you are losing work and you will never know which jobs. A client choosing between two similarly priced quotes notices details like this. Moving to name@yourcompany.com takes half an hour and is usually already included in the hosting you pay for.

Why this is more than cosmetics

• Trust — a domain address proves the company exists and controls that domain.
• Deliverability — mail from a properly configured domain lands in spam far less often than bulk mail from free services.
• Control — when an employee leaves, you close the account. If they used a personal Gmail for client work, that correspondence walks out with them.
• Consistency — everyone in the company follows the same pattern, no improvisation.

How to set it up

If you already have hosting, mailboxes are probably included. All our plans come with domain mailboxes at no extra charge. The process:

• In cPanel, open Email Accounts and create the address, e.g. name@yourcompany.com
• Choose a password of at least 16 characters and store it in a password manager
• Configure your client (Outlook, Thunderbird, phone) with the IMAP settings cPanel displays — port 993 for incoming, 465 for outgoing, always over SSL

If you prefer the Gmail interface, you can connect the business address to your existing Gmail account via "Send mail as" and keep everything in one inbox while sending from the professional address.

The three records that keep you out of spam

This is the part people skip, and the reason they later say "our emails never arrive":

• SPF — a DNS record listing which servers may send mail on behalf of your domain. Without it, Gmail and Outlook treat your messages with suspicion.
• DKIM — a cryptographic signature confirming the message was not altered in transit.
• DMARC — the policy that says what to do when SPF or DKIM fail. Start with p=none to collect reports, then tighten.

With us, SPF and DKIM are configured automatically when the mailbox is created. If you are migrating a domain from another provider, verify these records came across — nine times out of ten, a delivery problem traces back to exactly this.

How to name addresses across the company

Pick one pattern and stick to it:

• firstname@ — warmest, works well for teams up to about ten people
• firstname.lastname@ — the standard in larger organisations, avoids collisions when you hire a second Mark
• No accents or special characters — they break in older mail clients

Add two or three functional addresses: info@ or hello@ for general enquiries, sales@ and possibly support@. Make these forwarders (aliases) pointing to real people rather than separate accounts, so nobody has to check two inboxes.

How much storage you need

A typical business user consumes 1–3 GB per year if they keep attachments. For a team of five that is 15 GB over three years. If you routinely handle large files — designs, photos, video — send links from shared storage instead of attachments; that solves both the storage question and the attachment size limit (usually 25–50 MB).

Practical hygiene

• Enable two-factor authentication wherever it is offered
• Never reuse the same password for email and your hosting control panel
• Empty Sent and Trash regularly — they count against your quota
• When someone leaves, do not delete the account immediately: convert it to a forwarder for three months

If your current hosting does not include this, see what comes with our plans on the SEO hosting page. Domain mailboxes are standard there, not a line item added to the invoice.