I recently received an email asking me to promote a blog piece about ‘free business email’ services. When I do receive these types of questions I do look into them to decide if it is something that I think would benefit others. In the end, there were far too many things that I did not agree with, in the post, and I felt it was misleading and inaccurate so I am not sharing that one but I did decide to write my own response to the question that the so called article was asking. That question is:
Why does your business need its own email domain?
One great resource for micro and small businesses is always SCORE, I have referenced them in the past and I have used some of their resources as well. They have quick read, that provides 6 reasons why your business needs it own email domain.
1) One of the biggest reasons for not using a ‘free email’ service like you would for personal use is the credibility factor. I have read countless articles to prepare this one and that is always the number one reason.
Businesses using free services might seem unprofessional. Hence, it may lead to people judging the legitimacy of your company. Some people have a misconception that you are not serious about your business, while some others may think that your business won’t be around in the long run. There is a fair chance of your business becoming vulnerable to cybercriminals.
Source Geekflare
2) You are not locked into an email provider if you avoid the free services. When you have your own domain (aka @yourcompany.com) you can use any email hosting provider you would like. If you are using businessname@gmail.com you are pretty committed to that email service because let us be honest, humans don’t like to change and it could be a major undertaking to get your current email clients to change your address.
3) You can have your email hosted with a different company than hosts your website. If you are wondering what that means in plain English it is simply this, you can have your email hosted with your website host, and then as you expand and need more functionality you can keep your email address while having Google host your email via their Workspace service, and then you decide you no longer like Google Workspace you want to transition to Outlook and Office365, you can do all that without your customers realizing that you are changing things to meet your current business needs.
Cloudways has an additional argument in favor of hosting your email and website with different servers:
It is always a good practice to separate web hosting and email hosting because, in case of any unfortunate incident involving an attack on your web host, you would still retain access to your emails. In addition, email hosting has different requirements and a single server might not be able to cater to both.
Source Cloudways
Cost is always important to consider, and we all have different budgets to work with but all business owners can understand that we need to search for the best value for our dollar. Despite the information that I mentioned above I did find an article titled “5 Legit Ways to Get a Free Business Email Address” from FitsSmallBusiness.com. I take a slight issue with the ‘free’ in their title because they do discuss things like ‘free email with a web-hosting’ package as well as Google Workspace. This doesn’t mean that they are bad but there is a cost associated with them it just isn’t always a defined line item on an invoice.
For full disclosure I actually use Google Workspace and no it is not free, but in my opinion, it is not expensive either. If you are interested in using Google Workspace you can use my referral link, and if you complete the 14-day trial and are a paying user for at least 90 days I will receive a small amount from Google. Using my link does not increase or decrease your costs, and if you would like more information about the referral program details they are located here.
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NOTE: I am not being paid for my mentions of people, articles, products, or books I used above nor do I receive referral
compensation unless it is disclosed within the post itself, the links are for convenience.
Unless otherwise indicated I sourced the links provided while researching a post. Links that I provide at the request of another person/business will be noted,
and if I am paid to provide a link I will disclose that information on the post in which it is applicable. All opinions are mine, regardless of whether or not I
am compensated, and are not in any way influenced by the requesting party.
DISCLAIMER: This advice is general in nature and not to be taken as personal professional advice. This blog does not provide legal advice if you need
legal advice, please contact an attorney directly.