What is a business email? A business email is an email address sharing your business domain name, such as myname@mybusiness.com. It provides instant legitimacy and recognition for your brand instead of a generic domain (e.g., myname@gmail.com).
Best of all, making a branded business email address is affordable and easy: Get a domain, choose a hosting provider, decide on your format, and set up your business email address.
Google Workspace
Gmail is our top pick for creating a business email. Starting at $6 a month for Google Workspace with Gmail included, you can build brand credibility with a custom email on your domain plus get all the communication and collaboration tools your business needs, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and meetings.
Why You Should Use a Branded Business Email Address
Branded company email addresses are essential for building a strong brand presence, among other professional benefits.
- Appears professional: For you and your company to be taken seriously, you should have consistent branding. This includes using a professional work email address.
- Increases brand awareness: If the domain you use for email and your website includes your business name, it enhances your brand’s visibility and recall.
- Builds trust: A branded email address conveys integrity and reliability, whereas a generic one may cause prospects to question whether your business is substantial or will be around for the long haul.
Team or Departmental Email Boxes
In addition to individual employee name email addresses within the company, your business email address can also include general or group email addresses such as inquiries@yourbusinessname.com or sales@yourbusinessname.com which can be shared with multiple team members or departments.
How to Create a Business Email
Creating a business email requires four major steps: get a domain, choose a hosting provider, choose a format, select your email address, and create your email account.
Step 1: Get a Domain
To get started, go to your domain host of choice, which may be the same as your web or email host. Enter or choose your domain name, or an acceptable alternative if your first choice is unavailable. If you choose to host your website along with your domain name at the same provider, many of them offer the first year free with a web hosting plan.
Email addresses require a domain to work. The domain is the part of the email address that follows the @ sign in your email address (e.g., yourbusiness.com). Ideally, your business domain will be something like “yourbusinessname.com” or “yourbusinessname.biz.”
Pro Tip: Roadblock your brand name. If you register a business domain name, it’s often a good idea to purchase similar domain names, especially if misspellings are likely from printed marketing materials. These extra domains can then be pointed to the main domain address to ensure that customers end up in the right place.
Known as “roadblocking,” some business owners will purchase multiple versions with different top-level domains (TLDs) such as mybusinessname.com, mybusinessname.biz, and mybusinessname.co.
This can help avoid confusion with other companies with similar names and deter “trademark trolls” who attempt to make false claims about a brand name a business owner has chosen but not yet trademarked to extort money from the rightful owner through legal action.
Along with the cost of registration, there are several important add-ons to consider, which often add expense but are often important to the privacy and security of your domain:
- SSL certificate: An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is a digital file that verifies your website’s identity and encrypts the connection between a user’s device and the website’s server.
- Private registration: This ensures that your name and company information are kept private and cannot be discovered through your domain registration (often by spammers who want to shower you with junk emails).
- Domain lock: This feature keeps your domain safe by requiring additional verification from the owner to transfer, sell, change details, or otherwise alter anything in the domain record.
Step 2: Choose an Email Host
The next step in creating an email for a business is to navigate to the email or web hosting provider of your choice and create a business email account by following the registration prompts.
Registering a domain is a straightforward process, but before you do, you have some important questions to answer around how you want to manage your email and domain.
- Do you want to combine your email plan, domain name, and website hosting?
- Do you want to bundle your email plan with a productivity suite such as Google Workspace?
- Do you want your email hosting completely separate from another web host? This requires using a domain name you already own or buying one from a domain host and pointing this domain to that email provider.
In the table below, we show some of our top picks for hosting email and indicate whether they also offer website hosting and connected business productivity tools. For example, if you plan to use Google software (e.g., Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Google Meet), you can simply purchase a domain when setting up your Google Workspace account.
 |  |  |  | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Starting Cost per Month | $6 | $1* | Free | $2.95* |
No. of Addresses Included | 1 | 1 | Up to 5 | Unlimited |
Storage | 30GB-5TB | 2GB-50GB | 5GB | Unlimited |
Office Productivity Suite | Office productivity suite | Web or email hosting | Email and web hosting | Web hosting |
Domain Hosting | ✓ | X | ✓ | X |
Free Domain** | X | ✓ | X | ✓ |
Web Hosting | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Learn More |
*Billed annually
**Free domain for the first year, renews at full price
Step 3: Decide on a Format & Create Your Email Address
After selecting a custom domain and creating an account, the next step is to create a custom or professional email address by adding a username. There are several formats to consider for business email addresses, depending on whether they will be used by an individual or shared by a team (like a sales or customer support department).
Email Address Format | Examples |
|---|---|
First Name |
|
First + Last Name |
|
First Name + Last Initial |
|
First Initial + Last Name |
|
Generic, Shared, or Departmental |
|
Step 4: Set Up Your Email Account
Once you’ve decided on a format for your work email, follow the steps to set up your email based on your chosen provider. In most cases, it will be as simple as clicking a menu option to create an email address, inputting your username, and clicking a button to make it.
The steps to set up your email account will vary slightly for each provider, but below are guides on the setup process for some of the biggest ones, including Google Workspace (and Gmail), Microsoft 365 (and Outlook), Bluehost Webmail, and Zoho Mail.
- How to set up Gmail for business email
- How to set up business email on Outlook
- How to use Bluehost business email
- How to set up and use Zoho for business emails
Next Steps After Making a Business Email Address
Creating an email address that reflects your brand and business opens up many ways to maximize the benefits of having a professional email. For example, with a professional email, you can invite team members to join your company domain.
- Create a professional email signature to make your emails stand out with branding and a clear call to action.
- Add your email address to one of the best business email apps or stand-alone email software, such as Outlook or Apple Mail both on desktop and mobile.
- Jump-start your lead-generation efforts and start writing effective sales emails.
- Increase conversions by building on business email introduction templates.
If you’re starting to think there are countless ways to use your new email address to connect with prospects and customers—you’re right. We compiled 20 business email examples to help you leverage a simple business email into a powerful sales and marketing tool.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
A good email address for a business will include your business’s name, be on a top-level domain (e.g., .com or .org), and be well-formatted and easy to remember and spell. Some good examples are jane@fitsmallbusiness.com or tcook@apple.com. It’s also best to avoid using extra characters like hyphens, as they make your exact URL harder to recall.
Gmail has a free version where you can create an email address for personal use. However, as it’ll have an @gmail.com extension, it’s not recommended for business use. It’ll also have very limited storage space and team collaboration. If you own a domain name, you can use it on Gmail for business through a Google Workspace account for as little as $6 per month.
Creating a free business email account on a custom domain is possible. Free email addresses with a custom domain are always tied to the purchase of a web or productivity suite hosting plan. Zoho Mail is a great example of an email service with a free plan that offers up to five addresses on your custom domain.
Bottom Line
Branded email addresses are a business necessity and easy to get, thanks to the prevalence of cheap email hosting providers. Once you’ve selected your preferred host, creating one is as simple as purchasing a domain name and then an email provider to create your company email account.
These domain and email providers can be one and the same to simplify the process. You can also get a web hosting plan or productivity suite from many email hosts to further streamline all your business hosting needs.
