An address at your own domain — contact@yourdomain.com — inspires a confidence no free address can replace. It is included in your hosting, and creating it takes a minute.
Why it beats a free address
| Free address | Address at your domain | |
|---|---|---|
| What it says about you | A private individual | A business |
| Who it belongs to | The provider | You, for as long as the domain is yours |
| If you change provider | The address is lost | The address follows |
| Consistency with your site | None | The same name everywhere |
A free address on a business card loses customers without your ever knowing which ones. It is the kind of detail that cannot be measured and gets paid for.
How many addresses
The number of accounts included depends on your plan; it is stated on the order page. If you run short, the plan can be changed at any time.
Mailbox, alias, forwarding
Three notions often confused, and they do not cost the same.
| Notion | What it is | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Mailbox | A real account, with its password and its storage space | For a person who checks their mail |
| Alias | A second name that pours into an existing mailbox | billing@, quotes@, hello@ all arriving in the same place |
| Forwarding | An automatic transfer to another address | Redirecting to an outside address, for the time of a transition |
An alias consumes no account: it is the right answer to "I would need ten addresses". A forwarding, on the other hand, sends your messages out of your house — and it often degrades their delivery, because the receiving server sees a relayed message.
Creating an address
Creation happens from your hosting's administration interface, whose address and credentials are in the activation email.
Choose a long password specific to this address: a mailbox is a key that opens almost everything else, since password resets pass through it. See Protecting your account and your access.
How to name your addresses
contact@— the public address, the one on the site and the cards.firstname@— for people. Simple, readable, easy to remember over the phone.billing@,quotes@— useful as soon as bookkeeping exists; as aliases, not mailboxes.- Avoid
noreply@. An address that accepts no reply tells your customers their reply does not interest you, and filters treat it worse than others. - Avoid overly long names and accented characters: they will be dictated over the phone one day or another.
Next
- Setting up your email client — the protocols, the values, the pitfalls.
- When your messages land in spam — the three checks that settle most cases.
Your messages belong to you
At any time, and especially before leaving, you can bring your messages back to your machine. An email client configured for IMAP copies them locally; you then only need to export the folder. Do it before any cancellation.