Free e-mail address or e-mail on your own domain: what changes for a business

Short answer: for the business, use an address on your own domain (ana@asuaempresa.ao). For your personal life, the free one carries on serving. The difference is not “more professional” as a slogan: it is who controls the address, how many addresses you can have, and who is responsible when something fails.

Side by side

Free address from a public service E-mail on your own domain
The address Ends in the name of the service. To be unique, the name often ends up full of numbers. Ends in your name, and what comes before it is your choice: sales@, invoices@, ana@.
Who controls it The service. The rules and the account are theirs. You, for as long as the domain is yours. You can change e-mail provider without changing address.
Several addresses One account per person, with no company structure. As many as the plan allows, one per person or per role, and you can hand an address from one person to another.
Trust from the recipient Many people read it as a private person. It reads as the company. It helps on a proposal, an invoice, a first contact.
What stays with you Almost nothing. Renewing the domain, the e-mail DNS records, full mailboxes and passwords.
The other side of the coin: e-mail on your domain depends on the domain. If the domain expires, the e-mail stops. See domain renewal and keep automatic renewal on. The same goes for the hosting or e-mail plan that holds the mailboxes: if that lapses, mail stops arriving, so check the dates now and then.

Switching without losing anything, in five steps

1 Have the domain and the mailboxes. If you have hosting with us, mailboxes are already included: create them in cPanel. If you only want e-mail, see the Professional E-mail plan.
2 Set up the domain’s authentication. Without SPF, DKIM and DMARC your messages go to spam, however good the text: SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
3 Get the e-mail working where you read your mail. On the phone, on the computer and in webmail. You can have the old account and the new one in the same app (over IMAP): POP or IMAP.
4 Change the address where it is registered. Social networks, banks, shops, suppliers. Many ask for confirmation by e-mail: do it first, while you still have access to the old account.
5 Tell your contacts and keep the old account alive for a while, reading and forwarding. Close it only when nothing important arrives any more.
You do not have to pick one for ever. Many people use the free one for personal mail and the domain one for the business, and read both in the same app. If you are torn between the mailboxes that come with hosting and a separate e-mail plan, see e-mail inside a hosting plan or a separate e-mail plan.

Want your company e-mail on your own domain? Have a look at the professional e-mail plans.

See professional e-mail

SEE ALSO

The Professional E-mail plan

How to create an e-mail account in cPanel

SPF, DKIM and DMARC: why your e-mail lands in spam

Professional e-mail

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