Monday, October 6, 2008

What's your e-mail address?

Do you use a yahoo, hotmail, or other free service for your business e-mail? Or does your e-mail address end with @verizon.com, @comcast.com, @msn.com or some other provider?

If you answered "yes" to either of these questions, I suggest you reconsider your e-mail address options.

While free accounts are attractive for the obvious reasons, they are more appropriate for personal e-mail than business correspondence. Everyone knows these accounts are free, easy to set-up and change, and therefore, they don't project the image of a serious established business. Personally, I use a free account for online purchases so that all the spam associated with buying online doesn't bog down my business e-mail.

Verizon, Comcast, MSN, and similar accounts are not universally available; therefore, if you were to move or change internet providers, your e-mail address would need to change. Not only would you be at risk of missing messages sent to your old address, you would also lose all the settings and contact information you had built up in your old account.

Ideally, your business e-mail address should be yourname@yourcompanyname.com, and it's less expensive and far less hassle than you might think. To start, you'll need to reserve a domain name like www.yourcompanyname.com which costs as little as $10. Next choose a place to park/host your domain and set up an e-mail account through the domain. The vendor I use includes domain registration and unlimited e-mail accounts for a cost of $99/year. So for about $100 you and your employees would have permanent e-mail addresses your employees that can move and grow with you and your business and you'd also will have started the process of setting up a company web site.