There are a lot of businesses out there that still uses a free email service and have an email address like bizname@gmail.com. However, if you have invested money in hosting a website with your own domain name, you should also at least have an email with your company name on it.  The reasons for this include:

Memorability

Free email addresses are often long and confusing, and easy user names on these impersonal and generic domains, like@Hotmail and @Gmail are often already taken. In business, it is vital to create the right impression – you need an email address that is both unique and memorable. Using your own domain name makes it easy for others to email you and remember your website.

Professional Impression

Your domain name is your online brand. Your domain name gives you’re a presence on the Internet. Many people will look for your website when they receive an email from you. When your website appears, it validates and authenticates you and your products or services. Having  your own domain name for email establishes and reinforces your online identity and lets your customers know you mean business. It helps establish credibility and legitimacy by showing you invest in your business and make you look on par with large professional organizations and less fly-by-night or shoestring.

Don’t Look Like a Spammer

Authentication is very important because of the amount of spam each of us receives from many free email service providers, such at @Hotmail.com. Say you have a business named “Widgets For You” and have an email address “widgetsforyou@gmail.com.” How It would be very easy would it be for someone to fake being you by creating an email account “widgets4you@gmail.com?” Because those emails are free, they can be created by anyone. If you are a business, clients may not recognize john.smith@gmail.com as the same John Smith they order from. They may even think you’re a spammer.

Futureproof and Portable

When you have your own domain email you have an email address that’s as portable as your cellphone number—meaning you can switch email providers without losing your current address if you decide to change ISP or if your free email provider loses its edge. You won’t have to send out that dreaded “hey everyone I have changed my address” email and hope that everyone you notified will take notice and update your contact information.

Not Hard or Time-Consuming to Set Up

Even if you are very comfortable with your current way of doing things and want to stick with accessing your email at gmail.com, for example, you can still use your own domain name email. All you would need to do is to set up email forwarding. Here’s what it takes: Step 1: Buying a domain name (if you have already done this skip to Step 2). Step 2: Creating a forwarding account or email account with the right name (e.g. user@yourname.com). Step 3: Connecting that domain and that account together. (5-10 minutes, depending on your current email provider)

No More Ads

If you ever do decide to get rid of the advertising in your email experience then the best thing to do is to use your domain email outside of the free email provider. Even the best free email provider has ads and use your personal email information to feed you advertising. Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail all do it — they all read your email to better serve relevant ads that you are likely to click on. If you don’t want to read ads along with your emails, then you will have to stop using these free email services and use email hosting. More on this in my future post.