When you go domain name shopping, you’ll discover many registrars also offer email. Getting your domain name and email from the same place makes intuitive sense; after all, both end in yourBusinessName.com. I recommend you not do this. Instead, keep your web host and email service separate.

The short version is, email is complicated. The long version is, services like Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 are REALLY good at email deliverability. They ensure your email makes it to your customer’s inbox and not their spam. Plus, you’ll still be able to use your email service if your website goes down.

Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 aren’t just for email and include other products to help manage your business. Both have cloud storage, videoconferencing, calendar, and office suite software in every plan. My preference is Google Workspace, but you may not have a choice. Some professionals must use Microsoft Office products (looking at you, Excel). If you don’t have robust needs, then Google Docs works fine for the opening, light editing, and saving of Microsoft Office documents.

Whichever you choose, you’ll need to set up “Domain Name System” or “DNS” records for your email to work with your domain. That sentence was a lot. DNS records are text files that give information to domain visitors. E.g., every domain has an “A” or “address” record to indicate its IP address, 141.193.213.10 for allmonsolutions.com at the time of this writing. The “MX” or “mail exchange” record tells the domain how to handle incoming email. Here, we want the MX record to route it to your email service of choice.

Both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 have guides on how to set them up with your domain (Google also has site-specific resources with screenshots). If you’re not tech savvy, then ease of this step is a factor in which service to choose. I generally find Google Workspace more user friendly with documentation that’s easier to follow.

Now’s a good time to get a domain name to connect your email to. There are many reasonable domain registrars, and it’s more important to avoid the bad ones. I’ll call out a couple good bets, though. Porkbun has fair prices, good documentation, and a delightful pig aesthetic. You can look at their Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 setup guides to see how easy their DNS editor makes the process. Cloudflare is another option, albeit a more advanced one.

You should now have a domain name and email address that share the yourBusinessName.com schema. More importantly, you’ve taken control of your business’s digital footprint. So long as you pay the domain renewal and email subscription fees, no one else can use yourBusinessName.com. Next, we’ll work on a website to put on your domain.