Business email is an important communication method for your business. But, it is also a branding opportunity in that you can make your business email have the same domain name as your website. This will make your email address more professional.
There are a number of types of email servers you can choice. You could just use a personal email account like Gmail or Outlook.com. You might be able to get an email address from the same company that hosts your website. Internet service providers also provide email addresses. Finally, there are legacy options that are old email providers like AOL, Yahoo or Hotmail.
I recommend you avoid using an email account from the same company hosting your website. The reason is if you want to change website hosting companies, then you also have to move your email account. Additionally, I don’t recommend using legacy email providers like AOL or Yahoo because they are outdated providers so it makes your business look outdated too.
The best option for business email is a dedicated email hosting company. This could be Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) or Google Workspace (formerly G Suite). These provide full email services for many users along with email distribution groups. However, they are more difficult to setup.
The easiest option is to go with a personal email address at Gmail or Outlook.com. You can make the name of the email address be the business name. These are the easiest to setup.
A compromise option would be to create a personal email account with your business name but then forward your email from an email address using your domain name. So, you could have an email address of sales@companyname.com that forwards to companyname@gmail.com. This gives you a more professional email address that you can put on your website or business card but still have the ease of setup with a Gmail account. This email forwarding can be done at Hover assuming you are hosting your domain name there also.
If you would like to learn more about how to setup business email, check out a companion article on Digital Marketing Extreme.
