Business Email on Your Own Domain: A Plain-English Guide
Why [email protected] beats a Gmail address, what it costs, how SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop your emails landing in spam, and how to set it up without breaking anything.
If your quotes go out from [email protected], you’re leaving money on the table. Business email on your own domain, like [email protected], makes you look established, gets your emails delivered more reliably, and keeps your business communications separate and portable.
It’s cheap, it’s quick to set up, and once it’s done you don’t think about it again. Here’s what you need to know.
Why it matters
Trust. A customer comparing three quotes notices the one from a business address. It signals a real, ongoing business rather than a side hustle. For brokers, accountants and anyone handling personal information, it’s close to essential.
Deliverability. Emails from properly configured business domains are less likely to be flagged as spam, as long as the right DNS records are in place (more on that below).
Ownership. If an employee leaves, their mailbox stays with the business. If you sell the business, the email addresses go with it. A personal Gmail account goes with the person.
Organisation. Separate addresses like quotes@, accounts@ or bookings@ make it easy to route messages to the right person or folder.
What it costs
Business email is one of the cheapest upgrades you can make:
| Option | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Webralia mailbox | $4/mailbox/month, or 5 for $15 |
| Google Workspace via Webralia | $14/user/month |
| Email forwarding only | Often free with your domain |
You’ll also need a domain name, if you don’t already have one. A .com.au is $29 a year through us. See our guide to choosing and registering a .com.au domain.
Mailbox or forwarding?
Forwarding sends anything addressed to [email protected] to an existing inbox, such as Gmail. It’s free or nearly free and fine for receiving. Sending from that address through Gmail can work, but it’s fiddlier to set up and less reliable for delivery.
A proper mailbox is a full email account on your domain, with its own inbox, sent folder and storage. It works on your phone, in Outlook or Apple Mail, and in a web browser. If you send quotes and invoices, a mailbox is the better choice.
Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 add calendars, shared drives and office apps on top. Worth it if you have a team that needs shared documents and calendars.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC, explained simply
Email was designed in an era when nobody checked who was sending what. These three records fix that, and since 2024 major providers like Gmail and Yahoo have required them for bulk senders and increasingly enforce them for everyone.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a list of servers allowed to send email for your domain. If an email claims to be from your domain but comes from a server not on the list, it’s suspicious.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a digital signature to every email you send. The receiving server checks it against a public key in your DNS. If the signature matches, the email wasn’t forged or altered.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) tells receiving servers what to do with emails that fail SPF or DKIM: let them through, send them to spam, or reject them. It also stops scammers from easily sending fake invoices that appear to come from your domain, which is an increasingly common scam against Australian businesses.
You don’t need to understand the details. You do need someone to set all three up correctly when your email is created. We do that for every mailbox we set up.
How setup works
- Choose your addresses. Your name, plus any shared addresses like info@, quotes@ or accounts@.
- Create the mailboxes with your email provider.
- Add DNS records: MX records tell the world where to deliver your email, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC records prove your emails are genuine.
- Connect your devices. Add the account to your phone and computer.
- Test. Send and receive from a couple of different providers to check everything arrives.
If you’re moving from another email provider, existing emails can usually be copied across so you don’t lose history.
Website changes and email
One of the most common worries we hear is “will changing my website break my email?”. It shouldn’t. Your website and your email are controlled by different DNS records. When we connect a new website, we change only the records that point to the website and leave your MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records exactly as they are.
If a previous web developer set up your email on their hosting, it’s worth untangling that so your email isn’t tied to an old website host.
Choosing good addresses
- Use your first name (sarah@) for a personal touch, or firstname.lastname@ for larger teams.
- Use role addresses (quotes@, accounts@, bookings@) for things that might move between people.
- Avoid long or hard-to-spell addresses that customers will get wrong over the phone.
- Put your main address on your website, quotes, invoices, vehicle signage and Google Business Profile, consistently.
Sorted in one go
When you start a Webralia website, you can add mailboxes in the same brief. We set up the addresses, configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and connect everything to your domain, alongside your hosting and website.
Start your brief and get your website, domain and business email sorted together.