More than buying a domain
Most advice on setting up business email stops at “buy yourcompany.com.” That’s step one of six. Skip the rest and you end up with a professional-looking address that still lands in spam and still can’t prove it’s really you.
Here’s the whole sequence, in the order that matters, with plain notes on why each step is there.
The checklist
1. Get your domain.
Register yourcompany.com (about $12–$20 a year). Keep the login in the business’s name, not a personal account or an employee’s — you don’t want your domain held hostage later.
2. Choose a real email host.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, roughly $6 per person per month. Avoid the temptation to just forward [email protected] to a personal Gmail — forwarding lets you receive mail at the nice address but you’ll still be sending from the personal one, which defeats the point.
3. Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These three records are what tell the internet your mail is legitimate. Without them, even a paid business address gets filtered. This is the step almost everyone skips. (Full plain-English version: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC explained.)
4. Authorize every tool that sends as you. Your invoicing app, CRM, scheduler, and email-marketing tool all send mail using your name. Each one has to be added to your records, or its messages fail. Add a new tool later, and you have to update this again.
5. Move off personal email. Migrate your important mail, set the old account to forward for a transition period, and tell your regular customers your new address. Then actually use the new one — sending from the personal account is the habit that undoes all of this.
6. Test before you trust it. Send a test to a Gmail and an Outlook address and see where it lands. Run it through mail-tester.com for a score. In Gmail, open a message you sent and use “Show original” to confirm SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all say PASS. (More on this in why your business emails land in spam.)
7. If you take card payments, handle PCI. A business domain is also a compliance step. Complete your processor’s annual self-assessment and stop card data from living in your inbox. (See PCI DSS 4.0 for small business.)
The common mistakes
- Stopping at the domain. The address looks professional; the mail still goes to spam.
- Forwarding-only setups. You receive at the good address but send from the personal one.
- Adding tools and never updating your records, so new apps quietly fail.
- Never testing, so you assume it works until a customer says they never got your invoice.
Where to start
If you’d rather know which of these steps you’re missing before you start changing settings, that’s exactly what our free email and domain check covers. We look at your domain, your authentication records, and your payment-setup gaps, and send you a written summary you can work from — or hand to whoever manages your tech. No sales call.
