An invoice from sarahsbusiness123@gmail.com gets a second look. One from sarah@yourbusiness.co.za usually doesn’t. A professional email address uses your own domain name instead of a free service, and for a small business it’s one of the simplest upgrades to make.
1. Customers trust it more
Your email address is often the first thing a new customer sees. An address at your own domain shows you’ve invested in the business and plan to be around. A free address can look temporary, even when your business isn’t.
2. Every email carries your name
Quotes, invoices, newsletters and quick replies all show your business name after the @. It’s a small reminder of who you are on every message you send, at no extra cost.
3. The address belongs to you
A Gmail or internet provider address belongs to that provider. When the address is at your own domain, you can move your email to another host and keep every address. Your customers never need to update their contacts.
4. Better protection from scams
Our email hosting includes spam and virus filtering, and free SSL certificates for mail and webmail, so messages between your devices and our servers are encrypted. No filter catches everything, so it’s still worth knowing how to spot a phishing email.
5. It’s quick to set up
You need a domain name and an email hosting plan. Then:
- Register a domain, or use the one your website already has. This is the part after the @.
- Choose a plan. Email Basic allows up to 10 mailboxes, Email Plus up to 50 and Email Pro up to 100, with storage shared by all of them. Every mailbox sends and receives emails up to 50MB.
- Create a mailbox for each person, and aliases such as sales@ or accounts@ that deliver to an existing inbox.
- Add the account to your phone, Outlook or Apple Mail, or use webmail in any browser.
- Set up an email signature with your name, role and phone number.
Which address should you use?
Most small businesses use first names (john@), full names (john.smith@) or roles (sales@, accounts@, support@). Role addresses are worth having even if one person reads them all. When someone leaves, the address stays and you forward it to whoever takes over.
Moving from an existing address
If you already have email elsewhere, we copy it across for you at no charge.* Then choose an email hosting plan, or read what to look for in an email host first.
* Free email migration: Requires access to existing, working IMAP mailboxes.