Do you want to create a professional business email address for free? A business email address uses your company name and looks a lot more professional than a generic gmail or hotmail account. In this article, we will show you how to easily create a free business email address in just 5 mins with step by step instructions.
What is a Business Email Address?
Unlike a generic email, a professional business email address allows you to use your own company name as your email address such as: john@stargardening.com.
Most beginners use their personal email accounts for business. These email addresses are often created using email service providers like Gmail or Yahoo, and they don’t look very professional.
A business email address looks more professional and is easy to remember for customers. If you want your customers and other businesses to take you seriously, then you need to start using a professional business email address.
What Do You Need to Create a Business Email Address?
You will need to have domain name and a website to create a free business email address. After that, you will need an email service to handle your mail.
There are few different solutions that you can use to create a professional business email address. We will show you two different methodsm and you can choose the one that best fits your needs.
Method 1. Creating a Business Email Address for Free
This method is easy and available to almost everyone who has a website. It allows you to create a business email address for free.
When creating a small business website, you will need to signup for a domain and web hosting.
What most beginners don’t know is that many WordPress hosting companies offer free business email features as part of the package.
Normally, a domain name costs 14.99 per year and website hosting starts from $7.99 per month. You can add another $5 per email account if you were using a paid email service too.
Luckily, Bluehost, one of the largest WordPress hosting company in the world, has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name and 60% off discount on hosting.
This means you can start a business website for $2.75 per month (and it comes with a free business email address).
→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Deal ←
Here is the complete step by step instructions to create your first free business email address.
Step 1. Set up your Business Address (Domain Name)
First, you need to visit the Bluehost website and click on the green ‘Get Started Now’ button.
This will bring you to a pricing page where you need to click on the ‘Select’ button below the plan you want to use. Basic and Plus plans are popular among small businesses who are just getting started.
After selecting your plan, you will be asked to choose your domain name. You need to enter your business name and click on the ‘Next’ button.
Bluehost will now check to see if a domain name matching your business name is available. If it is not, then it will show you some suggestions, or you can look for another domain name.
Here are some quick tips on choosing the perfect domain name for your business email address.
- Always choose a .com domain name. See our article on the difference between .com vs .net domain names to learn more.
- Keep your domain name short, easy to remember and pronounce.
- Do not use numbers or hyphens in your domain name
- Try using keywords and business location in your domain name to make it unique. For example, if stargardening.com is not available, then look for stargardeninghouston.com
For more tips, take a look at our guide on how to choose the best domain name for your business.
Choosing a good domain name is crucial for your business but don’t spend too much time on that or you will never get past this step.
After choosing your domain name, you will need to add your account information and finalize the package info to complete the process.
On this screen, you will see optional extras that you can purchase. We don’t recommend choosing them at this time. If you need them, then you can always add them later from your account.
Lastly, you need to enter your payment information to finish the purchase.
You will receive an email with details on how to login to your web hosting control panel. This is where you manage everything from emails, support, website management, among other things.
Step 2. Creating Your Free Business Email Address
In your hosting account dashboard, you need to click on the ‘Email’ section and then click on ‘Add Email Account’ tab.
Enter a username and password for your email account and then click on the ‘Create Account’ button.
Bluehost will now create the email account for you and you will see a success message.
Step 3. Using Your Business Email Account
Now that you have created your free business email account, the next step is to learn how to use it to send and receive emails.
Under the ‘Email’ section on your hosting account, switch to the ‘Email Accounts’ tab. You will see your newly created email address listed there.
You can click on the ‘Access webmail’ link and Bluehost will take you to a webmail interface. This is a good option if you don’t want to use an email client.
However, you will have to log in to your hosting account each time you want to check your email. A better way is to click on connect devices and then click on set up mail client link.
Bluehost will show you the information needed to use your business email address with any mail client or app. You can use this information to set up using Outlook, Gmail, or any Mail app for your mobile phone or desktop.
Note: the process of creating a business email is similar for other hosting companies that offer cPanel like SiteGround, HostGator, and InMotion Hosting.
Method 2. Creating a Business Email Address using Gsuite
Google offers professional business email address with Gsuite which includes Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar for businesses.
This method is not free, but it allows you to use Gmail for your professional business email with your own business name. While there’s a small cost, it comes with many advantages.
- You will be using Gmail’s familiar interface and apps to send and receive emails.
- Google has far superior technology which ensures that your emails are delivered right away and they don’t end up in spam folders.
- Your website hosting company has shared server resources. This means they don’t want you to send too many emails. Gmail on the other hand, will allow you to send up to 2000 emails per day.
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That being said, let’s take a look at how to set up a business email address using Gsuite.
Step 1. Sign up for a Gsuite Account
Gsuite basic plan costs $5 per user each month. It gives you access to Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and audio/video conferencing with 30 GB of cloud storage for each user.
You will also need a domain name, which you can purchase during the signup. If you already have a domain name and a website, then you can use your existing domain with Gsuite.
To get started, simply visit the Gsuite website and click on the get started button.
On the next screen, you will be asked to enter your business name, the number of employees, and country where you are located. You can choose just yourself for 1 user account, or choose the number of employees.
Note: You will be charged for each user account, so it is better to start small. You can always add more user accounts when needed.
Click on the next button to continue.
You will be asked to enter your personal contact information including name and email address.
On the next screen, you will be asked to choose a domain name. If you already have a domain name, then click on ‘Yes I have one I can use’ or click on ‘No, I need one’ to register a domain name.
If you need to register a new domain name, then you will be charged separately for registering a new domain name. The cost of a domain name will be displayed on the screen and usually starts from $14.99 per month.
If you are using an existing domain name, then you will need to verify that you own that domain name. We will show you how to do that later in this article.
After choosing your domain name, you will be asked to create your user account by entering a username and password.
This username will also be your first business email address, so you need to choose a username that you want to use as your business email address.
After that, you will see a success message and a button to continue with the setup.
Step 2. Setting up Gsuite and Email
In this step, you will complete the Gsuite set up by setting up users and connecting it to your website or domain name.
On the setup screen, you will be asked to add more people to your account. If you wanted to create more accounts for your employees or departments, then you can do that here.
You can also just click on ‘I have added all user email addresses’ and click on the next button. You can always add more users to your account and create more email addresses later when needed.
If you are using Gsuite with an existing domain name, then you will be asked to verify that you own that domain name. To do that, you will now see a HTML code snippet that you need to add to your website.
There are other ways to verify your ownership as well. You can upload a HTML file to your website using an FTP client or file manager app in your hosting account dashboard.
If you don’t have a website, then you can use the MX Record method to verify your ownership of the domain name. You will see step by step instructions to do that once you choose this method.
For the sake of this article, we are assuming that you already have a WordPress website, and we will show you how to add the verification HTML code snippet in WordPress.
First, go to the admin area of your WordPress website to install and activate the Insert Headers and Footer plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Settings » Insert Headers and Footer page and paste the HTML code you copied from Gsuite under the ‘Scripts in Header’ section.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Now switch back to your Gsuite setup screen and click on the checkbox that says ‘I added the meta tag to my homepage’.
After that, you will be asked to enter MX record entries for your domain name. We will show you how to do that in the next step.
Step 3. Adding Domain MX Records
Note: This section is for users with existing domain names and websites. If you registered a new domain name via Google, then you don’t need to read this.
Domain names tell the internet servers where to look for information. Since your domain name is not registered with Google, your emails will reach your domain name but not to Google servers.
You will need to setup the right MX records on your domain name settings. This will tell your domain name server to use Google’s servers for sending and receiving emails.
To do that, log in to your web hosting account, or your domain registrar account. We will show you how to add MX records in Bluehost, the basic settings are the same on all hosts and domain registrars. Basically, you will be looking for DNS settings under your domain name.
Login to your Bluehost hosting dashboard and click on ‘Domains’. On the next page, select your domain name and then click on the ‘Manage’ link next to DNS Zone Editor option.
Bluehost will now open your DNS zone editor. You need to switch back to your Gsuite setup screen and check the box that says ‘I have opened the control panel of my domain name’.
It will now show you the MX records that you need to enter. You will also see a link to the documentation which will show how to add these records to dozens of hosting and domain services provider.
Here is how you will add this information to your Bluehost DNS settings
Click on ‘Add Record’ button to save it. After that, repeat the process to add all five lines as MX records.
Once you are finished, switch back to Gsuite setup and check the box next to ‘I created the new MX records’.
You will be asked to delete any existing MX records still pointing to your website hosting or domain name provider servers.
Switch back to your DNS zone editor and scroll down to MX records section. You will see the MX records you created earlier along with an older MX record still pointing to your website.
Click on the delete button next to the old MX record to delete it.
After that, switch back to the Gsuite setup screen and check the box that says ‘I deleted existing MX records’.
You will now be asked to save your MX records. For some providers once you add MX records they are already saved, for some you may need to manually save MX records.
Once you have saved MX records check the box that says ‘I have saved MX records’ in Gsuite setup.
After that you need to click on ‘Verify domain and setup email’ button to exit the setup wizard.
Step 4. Managing email in Gsuite
Gsuite makes it super easy to manage your email account. You can simply visit the Gmail website to check your email or use the official Gmail apps on your phone to send and receive emails.
You will need to sign in using your business email address as your username.
To create more business email addresses simply go to the Gsuite Admin console. From here you can add new users, make payments, and adjust your Gsuite account settings.
That’s all, we hope this article helped learn how to create a free business email address or create a professional business address with Gsuite. You may also want to see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending emails issue.
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The post How to Create a Free Business Email Address in 5 Minutes (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.
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