Setting up business email on your own domain

Business email on your own domain: the short answer

Business email on your own domain means an address like jan@yourcompany.nl instead of yourcompany@gmail.com. You need two things for it: a domain name and an email provider. Budget a few euros per mailbox per month.

Setting it up isn't hard. The tricky part is a handful of settings that decide whether your email arrives or ends up in spam. And the switch itself, if you already have an address. In this article I explain both.

In full honesty: I arrange business mailboxes for clients myself. Below I'll also tell you when you're better off with another provider.

Why an address on your own domain?

A free address is fine to start with. Still, most business owners switch at some point. These are the main reasons:

• Trust. An address on your own domain shows you're a real business. It matches your website, your quotes and your business card.
• The address is yours. Your domain name is registered in your name. If you move to another email provider, you keep the same address. Your clients won't notice a thing.
• More addresses. Think of info@, invoices@ or your own name. Extra addresses (aliases) can often simply arrive in one mailbox.
• Work and private kept apart. Your business email doesn't sit between your personal messages, and you can easily hand it over to a colleague later.

What are your options?

There are roughly five ways to set up email on your own domain. None of them is always the best. It mostly depends on what you need besides email.

• Stay with your current provider. Many companies that hold your domain or hosting include mailboxes. If that works well, there's no reason to switch. Do check the storage space and the spam filter.
• Google Workspace. Your email works like Gmail, with a calendar, Google Drive and video calls included. You pay per user per month. Handy if you work with others in shared documents.
• Microsoft 365. Your email lands in Outlook and, depending on the plan, you get Teams, Word and Excel as well. Again you pay per user per month. The logical choice if you already work in Office.
• A simple mailbox with a European provider. Just email, without everything around it. Usually cheaper, and your email is stored on servers in the EU.
• Forwarding to your existing address. Email to your own domain arrives in, for example, your Gmail. That's cheap, but sending from your business address needs extra settings and goes wrong more easily.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC in plain English

These are three settings in the DNS of your domain. DNS is the address book of the internet: it tells computers where your website lives and where your email should go. You can read more in domain names and DNS explained.

Together, these three show that an email really comes from you. Without them, your email ends up in spam more often, and others can more easily send email that appears to come from you.

• SPF: the guest list. A list of servers that may send email on behalf of your domain. If an email comes from a server that isn't on it, the recipient gets suspicious.
• DKIM: the seal. Every email gets a digital signature. The recipient checks it with a key that's published in your DNS. If it matches, they know the email wasn't changed on the way.
• DMARC: the house rules. This tells recipients what to do with email that fails the SPF or DKIM check: do nothing, put it in spam or reject it. You can also receive reports with it.

Switching without losing email

Already have an address and want to move to another provider? Then you want nothing to get lost along the way. Here's how, in this order:

• List all the addresses, aliases and forwarding rules you have now. They're easy to forget.
• Create the new mailboxes before you switch anything.
• Move your old email. Many providers have an import feature for this.
• Switch the MX records. Those are the settings that decide which server receives your email. Update SPF, DKIM and DMARC at the same time.
• Keep your old account running for a while. It sometimes takes a few hours, occasionally longer, before the new setting is known everywhere. During that time, email can still arrive at the old place.
• Set up your phone and computer again. Only cancel the old account once everything has worked well for a few weeks.

How I arrange it myself

At truck8.dev you can get a business mailbox for €5 per mailbox per month. I arrange it through an external email provider in the EU. You get webmail, email on your phone and computer, a spam filter, forwarding and an out-of-office reply. Setting up the DNS for your email, including SPF, DKIM and DMARC, is included.

What isn't included: moving old email from another provider. That's possible, at my hourly rate of €95. The mailbox is for normal business use. You don't send newsletters or bulk mailings with it; a newsletter service is the right tool for that. You can cancel monthly, with one month's notice. All prices exclude VAT.

Want to keep your current email? That's fine too. When I build your website, your existing email keeps working as it does. What else I take care of after launch is explained under hosting and maintenance.