How to Create a Company Email Address

When creating a company email address, you want something that matches your business and looks professional. It needs to be something easy to remember, and something you can easily fit onto business cards. Many company websites come with the ability to create multiple user email accounts. The email address would be comprised of a username then the "@" symbol, then the company/domain name. Those without a company domain can also create company email addresses relatively quickly and easily.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Time
• Computer with Internet access

1. Decide how you want usernames to be assigned for the email accounts as well as whether you will be using your company website email accounts or email accounts elsewhere.

2. As an example, if your company name is ABC Auto and your domain name is abcauto.com, then your might want your email address to be something like [e-mail]. Allowing each user to have a username that identifies their title or position with the company email domain name is one way to create company email addresses. Commonly used titles are admin@domainname, support@domainname and webmaster@domainname.

3. Another way to create company email addresses is to use first or first and last names as the username with the company email domain name. This would create email addresses such as [e-mail] or [e-mail]. It is generally considered best to use either this option or the position/title option for the most professional look. You can use both options simultaneously, as well. This is a great choice if your company has positions with a high turnover rate and departments that have multiple employees all needing to access the same email account, such as "webmaster" or "admin." Individual employees can have their names as their username, and departments can use titles.

4. Promotional email addresses are the exception to the rule about professional appearance. Email addresses created specifically for promotions and contests may need to be more "fun" or "loose" in order to be easily identifiable to the public for your promotion. In this case, a keyword or phrase relating to the promotion would be used with the email domain name. For example, if you having an essay contest with a car as the prize, your email address for the entries might be [e-mail].

5. If you do not have a company website with available email addresses, you can still create business email accounts.Services such as GoDaddy offer custom email addresses for a fee. When you sign up, you select the username and domain name you want to use, make sure it is available and pay your fee. The site has the necessary tools to check email address availability (see Resources below).

6. Free email services such as Google Gmail, Yahoo! and MSN’s Hotmail are another option for setting up a company email address. However, the email address will be your username @ gmail.com, yahoo.com, or hotmail.com. You can use your domain name as your username, but it will appear as a username, not a domain name. For example, if you signed up with MSN’s Hotmail, your address would be [e-mail] (see Resources below).

7. AOL’s My eAddress allows users to choose their username and match it up with a domain name that is already in their system (see Resources below). There are many domain names to choose from. In this example, the email address could be [e-mail], [e-mail] or [e-mail]. If you use this option, you will not be the only person with an email address at this domain. Anyone can choose a username and have it go to the "bestcoolcars.com," "car-net.nut" or "intomotors.com" domain.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have your own web domain, you can get free custom email accounts that only go with your domain name through AOL’s My eAddress service. This means only those accounts you set up or have invited can use your domain name.
• One benefit having multiple email accounts with your domain is that if you decide you don’t like the email address you have created, you can create another one to use. Some systems will allow you to delete email addresses you don’t like or use, others will not.
• If you use any service for setting up custom domain emails, be sure to read the fine print of their terms of use and all other agreements. You may be giving them the right to own your email domain, which means you will not be able to add that email domain name to your website later. For example, if you set up autopros.com with them for email, you will not be able to use that email domain anywhere else.
• Take care to not use trademarked or copyrighted names in your email address as it may subject you to legal action.
• Some people believe that business email addresses from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other free email services do not look professional. Bear this in mind when creating your email account.
• Be careful when using catchy phrases or IM/Chat lingo in your usernames. They can be difficult to understand, misread into offensive things, or look very unprofessional.

Resources

• AOL’s My eAddress
• Gmail
• Yahoo! email
• Hotmail