How to set up a business email address on your own domain.

What you need, in order

A business email address has three parts: a domain the business owns, an email service that holds the mailboxes, and a few DNS records that connect the two. You do not need a website at all. The order:

• Register the domain in the business's name, as how to choose a domain name explains.
• Sign up for an email service, with the owner as the first administrator.
• Prove you own the domain by adding the verification record the service gives you.
• Create the mailboxes, aliases and shared addresses.
• Point the domain's email records, the MX records, at the service.
• Add the records that prove your mail is genuine, so it does not land in spam.
• Set up the phones and computers, then send a test in each direction.

Most of the work is deciding which addresses to create and who controls the account. The technical part is a short list of records copied from the service's setup screens into your DNS settings.

Mailbox, alias, shared address or forwarding

These four get mixed up, and the difference decides what you pay and who can read what:

• A mailbox has its own login, storage and sent mail. Email services charge for each person with a mailbox.
• An alias is a second address that delivers into an existing mailbox. In Google Workspace each person can have up to 30 at no extra cost, and to send from one they add it as an extra From address in Gmail.
• A shared address delivers to several people. In Google Workspace it is a group, which sends each message to its members. In Microsoft 365 it is a shared mailbox, which needs no licence of its own up to 50 GB and which members open from their own mailbox. Only people inside your organisation can use a Microsoft 365 shared mailbox.
• Forwarding passes mail on to an address somewhere else, such as a personal Gmail account. Some registrars include it with the domain. It receives mail but gives you no mailbox on the domain.

For most small businesses the answer is a mailbox for each person who writes to customers, plus aliases or shared addresses for everything else.

Which addresses to create

Give a named mailbox to each person who emails customers, and a role address to each job that outlives the person doing it. Role addresses are the ones you print, because they survive staff changes.

• A sole trader: one mailbox, such as sam@, with info@ as an alias on it.
• A three-chair barbershop: the owner's mailbox, plus bookings@ as a group that reaches the owner and whoever runs the front desk.
• A dental practice: named mailboxes for the dentists and the practice manager, reception@ as a shared mailbox the front desk works from, and accounts@ for invoices.
• An accountancy practice: named mailboxes for each accountant, because clients write to the person they know, plus documents@ for year-end paperwork.

Use first names if the team is small and nobody shares one, and first.last@ if two people do. Put role addresses on the website, the van and the invoices, and named ones on business cards. When someone leaves, the role addresses keep working and only their named address needs dealing with.

Choose an email service

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are the usual choices, and services such as Zoho Mail, Fastmail and Proton also work with your own domain. Many hosting plans include mailboxes too. Choose on these, not on feature lists:

• The program your team already knows: Gmail or Outlook.
• Shared addresses that suit how the team works.
• Good phone apps, since you will read much of your mail on a phone.
• Where the mail is stored, if you are in Europe and the GDPR applies.
• Who you can call when it breaks, and whether they answer.

Avoid mail that comes bundled with your website hosting unless you are sure you will never move the website. When you change host, the mailboxes on the old hosting go with it, and moving them under pressure is how messages get lost. With email at a separate service, a new website never touches your inbox.

Setting it up before you have a website

Email needs only the domain. The records that deliver mail are separate from the records that point to a website, so you can set up email now and add the website later without touching it.

If you have no domain yet, some email services sell one during sign-up. Google Workspace does it through its partner Squarespace, so the domain lives in a Squarespace account. That is fine as long as you know it, keep the login and set the renewal to a card the business holds.

When the website arrives, whoever builds it changes the website records and must leave the email records alone. Ask them to copy every DNS record before they change anything, as the website launch checklist says.

Set it up, step by step

The screens differ between services, but the steps are the same:

• Sign up as the owner, using an address you already have for the first administrator and for recovery. Never use the designer's address.
• Add the verification record the service shows you in your domain's DNS settings, then press verify.
• Create each mailbox, then add the aliases and shared addresses. For a Google group, check who is allowed to post to it, so customers outside the business can write to it.
• Change the MX records to the ones the service gives you, and delete the old ones. If you are moving from another provider, keep the old mailboxes open until the old mail has been moved across.
• Add the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records. Without them, Gmail and others may mark your mail as spam or reject it. Why your business emails go to spam covers each record.
• Install the Gmail or Outlook app on each phone and sign in with the new address.
• Send a message from outside, such as a Gmail account, to each address, and reply to it. Then send one to someone at another company.

Write down the records you added and the date. The next person to touch your DNS will need them.

Moving old email across

If you already have mail somewhere, such as mailboxes on your old hosting or a personal Gmail account used for the business, move it before you switch off the old service. Both main services have tools for this, run by an administrator:

• Google Workspace has a data import tool in the Admin console that copies email from Microsoft 365, from another Google account and from IMAP providers such as Zoho or GoDaddy.
• Microsoft 365 can copy mail from services that support IMAP, including Gmail. It moves the mail folders only, not contacts or calendars, so export those separately.

The order that loses nothing: create the new mailboxes, copy the old mail, change the MX records, then check whether anything new arrived at the old service in between. Keep the old service running until nothing does.

Keep the admin login with the business

The administrator of your email service can reset any password, which opens any mailbox, and can delete accounts. Whoever holds that login holds the business's email, so it belongs to the owner.

Google says a Workspace organisation should have more than one super administrator, each managed by a separate person, each with a separate account for everyday work and with recovery details added. Microsoft says to keep global administrators as few as possible, give everyone else the most limited role that does the job, and require multifactor sign-in for admins. In practice:

• The owner and one trusted person from the business hold the top admin role.
• Each has two-step verification on, with recovery details that are their own.
• A designer or IT supplier gets a limited admin role for the work, never the top one, and is removed when the work ends.
• Nobody uses the top admin account for everyday email.

If a designer, an IT supplier or one employee is the only top administrator today, fix it now: add the owner as a second one, change the recovery email and phone to the business's own, then reduce their role. How to give a supplier access covers the limited roles.

When someone leaves

Plan this before it happens, because the obvious move, deleting the account, loses their mail:

• In Google Workspace, transfer their files and mail to someone else before you delete the account. Google deletes anything that was not transferred. Redirect their incoming mail to another address, or give their address to another person, so customers' emails keep arriving.
• In Microsoft 365, block their sign-in first, then forward their email or convert their mailbox to a shared mailbox. Deleting the account stops mail to that address.
• Change the passwords of any shared logins they knew, and take them out of every group and shared mailbox.

For a busy role, keep the leaver's address working for a few months, as an alias or a shared mailbox, so the customers who still write to it reach someone.

What decides the cost

Business email is priced per person with a mailbox, so the bill follows the number of people, not the number of addresses. What moves it:

• How many people need their own mailbox.
• The plan level, which sets storage, video calls, archiving and admin controls.
• Paying monthly or committing for a year.
• The domain, renewed separately.
• Help moving old email across, if a supplier does it.

Count the people who write to customers, then cover every other address with aliases and shared addresses. A five-person office with twelve addresses usually needs five mailboxes, not twelve.

Free Gmail with forwarding: when it stops being enough

A cheap setup forwards the domain's email to a free Gmail account and replies from Gmail as the business address. Google has said that from January 2027 Gmail on the web will no longer send mail from accounts at other providers, or collect their mail by POP. Forwarding into Gmail still delivers the mail, but replying as your business address from Gmail on the web stops, and for a custom domain Google points you to Google Workspace.

The setup had costs before that too. The mail sits in someone's personal account, it leaves when they do, and nobody else can see what was promised to a customer. It is fine for a first month. For a business, pay for proper mailboxes.

Mistakes to avoid

• Email bundled with hosting you are about to cancel. Move the mailboxes first.
• One login for info@ shared by five people. You cannot tell who sent what, and when one of them leaves you must change it for everyone. Use a group or a shared mailbox.
• The designer's or an employee's personal address as the recovery email on the admin account.
• Changing the MX records without a copy of the old ones, or before the old mail has moved.
• Leaving out SPF and DKIM, so quotes and invoices land in spam.
• A paid mailbox for every address, when aliases would do.
• Deleting a leaver's account before moving their mail.

A checklist to keep

• The domain is registered to the business and renews on a business card.
• Two people from the business hold the top admin role, with two-step verification on.
• Recovery details on the admin accounts belong to the business.
• Every role address is a group, a shared mailbox or an alias, not a shared login.
• SPF, DKIM and DMARC are in place, and a copy of every DNS record is kept.
• There is a written list of steps for when someone leaves.

Anything that sends email as your domain needs the same care, including the website form, your booking tool and any enquiry follow-up that replies to customers for you. Each one has to be allowed to send for the domain, or its messages fail. When we build a website, the domain and accounts are set up in your name or handed over at launch, as our websites page says.