Block out an hour on a quiet afternoon. By the end of it you will have you@yourcompany.com working on your phone and your laptop, with the old address forwarding into it.
The six steps
- Pick a name. Pick a short, spellable name and an ending that fits your business. Register it at any registrar or inside your email host.
- Pick a host. Compare the pricing model, storage, deliverability setup, apps and migration tools. Sign up and add your domain.
- Connect DNS. Add the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records your host gives you at your registrar, or let the host place them automatically.
- Create mailboxes. Create a mailbox for each person and role address. Use aliases for addresses that only need to arrive somewhere.
- Add your devices. Sign in to webmail, then add the account to your phone and desktop mail app with the host's settings.
- Move your old mail. Copy history from the old account with a migration tool, then forward the old address to the new one for a few months.
Minute zero: the name
If you already own a domain, skip ahead. If not, choose one you can say aloud on the phone without spelling it. Short beats clever, and a plain .com or your country's ending beats a bargain ending that some spam filters distrust. Register it at any registrar, or inside your email host if it sells domains, which saves a step later. Budget $10 to $15 a year and ten minutes.
Minute ten: the host
The host is the company that will run your mail servers. Decide two things before you compare anything else. First, whether you want to pay per person, where hello@ and billing@ each cost a seat, or a flat price for the whole company. Second, whether the host will place the DNS records at your registrar for you, because that step is where most setups stall. Then check that it speaks IMAP and SMTP, so any mail app works, and sign up. Faivelo, for the record, is flat, places the records for you, and starts with a free trial that needs no card.
Minute twenty: the records
Your domain's DNS entry needs four records. MX tells the world to deliver your mail to the host. SPF lists the servers allowed to send as your domain. DKIM signs each outgoing message so nobody can alter or forge it. DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails the other two. Miss the first and your mail bounces or keeps arriving at the old provider. Miss the rest and Gmail quietly files you under spam.
If your host connects to your registrar, this is a paste of an API key or a login, and the records appear on their own. If not, copy each record from the host into the registrar's DNS panel, exactly, and wait. Most changes show up within minutes, a few take an hour. Ten minutes either way, unless you typo a record, which is why the automatic path exists.
Minute thirty: the mailboxes
Create a mailbox for each person, then think about the doors: hello@ for the website, support@ for customers, billing@ for invoices. Addresses that only need to arrive somewhere can be aliases pointing at a real mailbox rather than mailboxes of their own. On a flat plan this costs nothing extra, so err on the side of more doors. Write the first password down somewhere safe, because most hosts show it once.
Minute forty: your phone
Sign in to webmail first to prove the mailbox works, then send yourself a message from an outside account and reply to it. Add the account to your phone and your desktop mail app with the host's IMAP and SMTP settings, or by installing the profile if the host provides one. A message read on one device should show as read on the others within a few seconds. If it does not, the app is set up as POP rather than IMAP, and that is the fix.
Minute fifty: the old inbox
Copy the history across with the host's migration tool, which will keep running in the background after your hour is up. Then set the old address to forward to the new one and leave that in place for a few months, so anyone still writing to the old address reaches you. Update the address on your website, your invoices and your signature, and you are done. The hour is over and you never need to do this again.
The hour is over, and you never need to do this again.
The hour, done for you
Faivelo places the DNS records at your registrar, creates the mailboxes, sets up your devices and copies your old mail. Most people finish in ten minutes rather than sixty. Free for fourteen days, no card.