With the right email hosting, you can personalise your email with your domain. Creating a professional email address can help businesses in a number of ways, but what do we mean by a custom email address?

What is a custom email address?

When communicating with businesses online, you might notice that their email address is different from the personal addresses you use – like sales@fasthosts.co.uk. With a custom email address, the section that once referred to your email provider, such as Gmail or Outlook, is replaced. This can be replaced with anything of your choice, but many will use this as a way to include their company name in their email.

Why use a custom email address?

The reality is, a personal, professional email address is not something reserved just for businesses. Anyone can set up their own custom email address and instantly become more reputable on the web. And users actually prefer to see you with your own custom email for a number of reasons. Firstly, it gives them the confidence that they’re contacting the right people, and secondly a custom email looks a lot more professional and trustworthy. Build your personal or professional brand with the help of a custom email address.

Setting up a custom email address

So, how can you create your own custom email address for your business or for personal use? Let us walk you through the steps:

Step 1: Get a domain

The domain name you choose will depend on what you want to use it for. If you want to start a business, you should pick a name to reflect the brand or industry of the business. You’ll need to make a decision on both the part before the dot, and after. The part of the domain after the dot is called a domain extension, or top-level domain (TLD).

The most popular and recognisable domain extension is .com, so if you intend for your business to be globally available, securing a .com domain name is advised.

However, being the most common, this means that many of the more memorable .com domains have already been registered. You don’t need to rule out or change your business name because of this – simply try out some alternative TLDs.

For example, .uk domains are for UK companies, so if you’re based primarily in the UK, using a .co.uk domain is often better, with more specific extensions like .scot domains ideal for local businesses. But if your business is more global, there are plenty of other gTLDs for alternative extensions, including:

  • .net – great for networking or IT businesses
  • .co – used by a lot of tech startups
  • .shop – perfect for ecommerce businesses

But what if you don’t have a business at all? As we mentioned, you can have a personal email address regardless. Whether you’re a freelancer who wants to communicate better with their clients, or a professional who wants to represent themselves to prospective employers, having a personal email address will help you do just that. Nothing’s stopping you from registering a .com email, but why not be more specific?

  • A .name domain is specifically designed for individuals to register their name as a domain. This extension is perfect if you want to represent yourself online.
  • A .me domain name is another popular choice for individual domains. It’s a little snappier than .name, and still clearly states what it represents.

Step 2: Choose an email provider

Once you’ve registered your domain, you’ll need to find an email provider which supports the use of a personalised email address. These options are almost always paid, but with services like our Email Hosting packages starting at only £0.99 per month, the cost is negligible for the value of having a personal, professional email address.

Using a paid email provider over a freemail site like Gmail comes with other benefits too. If you’re using a paid service, you won’t be on the same platform as bots, spammers, and malicious users. This can help to prevent your emails to clients or colleagues being lost in their spam folders.

Step 3: Set up your mailbox

Now you’ve registered a domain and found an email provider, it’s time to set up your custom email address.

If you’ve chosen to register your domain with Fasthosts, setting up your mailbox is simple. Just head into your Control Panel, and click on ‘Domain Names’ on the left side. Click on the domain you want to use for your email in the list, then go to the ‘Email’ tab and click ‘Add a mailbox’.

You’ll be shown some fields which you can fill out to set up your email account. The first field lets you choose what you would like your custom email address to be. This depends on what you would like to use the email for, but there are a number of options that are picked most often.

  • me@yourdomain.com – if you’re representing yourself as an individual and want your custom email address to be a point of contact for you, putting just the word ‘me’ before the @ symbol is a memorable way of showing this.
  • info@yourdomain.com – this one does what it says on the tin, and can be a great way for people to get information about you. It’s also a good address to send email from, as it adds a layer of credibility to the information you’re sending out.
  • biz@yourdomain.com – this is a great domain to use to discuss jobs, business, or other commercial opportunities.

Unlike a free email account, what’s before the @ symbol can be whatever you like, as only you are using your domain name – so you can set it to whatever you want!

Once you’ve set up your Fasthosts mail account, you can either access your mailbox through your browser on our webmail service, or you can follow our handy guide to find out how you can set up your new personal email address on popular clients.

Check out our email hosting packages to find one that’s right for you. Get started using your custom email address today by contacting our sales team.