How to Create a Free Business Email Address in 5 Minutes (Step by Step)
Do you want to create a professional business email address for free? A business email address uses your company name instead of the generic gmail or yahoo account. In this article, we will show you how to easily create a free business email address in less than 5 minutes.
What is a Business Email Address and Why You Need it?
A professional business email address has your company name instead of the generic gmail or yahoo account, for example: john@stargardening.com
Most beginners use generic free business email accounts without a domain name which isn’t very professional. For example: john.smith2019@gmail.com or jsmithfromstargardening@yahoo.com.
Since anyone can create these generic email accounts, it becomes harder for customers and other businesses to trust such email addresses as legitimate business email accounts.
Below are the top 4 reasons why you need a professional email address for your business:
- A custom business email address looks more professional.
- It is also short and easy to remember.
- A professional business email address helps you earn customer’s trust as a legitimate business.
- Sending emails with your own business name allows you to promote your brand with each email you send.
The best part is that you can get your own custom business email address for free, which means there is no excuse for not getting it.
If you want your customers and other businesses to take you seriously, then you need to start using a professional business email address, immediately.
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 provider to handle your business emails.
There are a few different solutions that you can use to create a professional business email address.
We will show you two different methods, and you can choose the one that best fits your needs.
The first method is free and fairly easy to setup whereas the second method has a small fee, but it offers a lot more features.
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 buy a domain and signup for 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. If you were to use a paid email service, then you can add another $5 per email account.
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 your 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 free business email address with Bluehost.
Step 1. Setup 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 the most 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 alternative 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 including website management, business email accounts, and other settings.
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, 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 on your desktop or mobile.
The downside is that you will have to login 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 setup your business email inOutlook, Gmail, or any Mail app for your mobile phone or desktop.
Note: the process of creating a business email is pretty much the same with other hosting companies that offer cPanel like SiteGround, HostGator, and InMotion Hosting.
Method 2. Creating a Business Email Address using G Suite
Google offers professional business email address with G Suite 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.
We use G Suite for our business email address here at WPBeginner.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to setup a business email address using G Suite.
Step 1. Sign up for a G Suite Account
G Suite 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 G Suite.
To get started, simply visit the G Suite 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 users when needed.
Click on the next button to continue.
On the next step, you will be asked to enter your personal contact information including name and email address.
After that, 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’.
If you don’t have a domain, then 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.
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 Business Email with G Suite
In this step, you will complete the G Suite setup by adding 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 want 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.
Remember, you can always add more users to your account and create their email addresses later when needed.
If you are using G Suite 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 G Suite under the ‘Scripts in Header’ section.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Now switch back to your G Suite 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 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 the Google servers.
You will need to setup the right MX records on your domain name settings, so Google’s servers can send and receive emails for your business.
To do that, you will need to login to your web hosting account, or your domain registrar account.
In our article, we will show you how to add MX records in Bluehost, but 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 G Suite 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 shows you 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 G Suite 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 registrar.
To do this, you need to switch back to your DNS zone editor and scroll down to the 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 G Suite 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 others 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 G Suite setup.
After that you need to click on ‘Verify domain and setup email’ button to exit the setup wizard.
Step 4. Managing email in G Suite
G Suite 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 G Suite Admin console. From here you can add new users, make payments, and adjust your G Suite account settings.
Business Email Address FAQs
Following are some of the most commonly asked questions by our users regarding business email addresses and how to use them.
1. Can I create more custom email addresses for my business for free?
If you are using Bluehost, then yes you can go ahead and create more email accounts for free (You get 5 email accounts with basic and unlimited accounts with plus and choice plus plans).
If you are using G Suite, then you can create email aliases which are separate addresses for the same email account. However, if you want to add a different email account or a new employee, then you will be charged based on your plan.
2. Can I create free business email without domain?
No, you cannot create a free business email account without a domain. You can create a free email account with Gmail or Hotmail, but it will not use your business name, so it will not be considered a business email address by customers and other businesses.
3. Can I use desktop and mobile email apps with my custom branded email address?
Yes, you can use your business email address with any desktop or mobile email apps. Most of these apps can automatically figure out mail settings. You can also get these settings from Bluehost or G Suite documentation.
4. Can I switch my free business email account to another provider if needed?
Yes, you can switch to any other email service, website hosting, or domain registrar and take your business email address with you.
5. What are some business email address examples that I should use?
It depends on your business needs. For example:
- You can create a custom branded email for yourself or individual employees like: john@stargardening.com
- You can set up a business email account for departments like sales, support, HR, etc. sales@stargardening.com
6. Can I create a free business email address without making a website?
Yes, you can. However, you’ll still need to pay for website hosting because you get the email service and domain name for free with your hosting package.
Once you have signed up, you can choose a domain and then just create your email address.
That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to create a free business email address or create a professional business address with G Suite. You may also want to see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending emails issue.
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