Email From an Address That Matches Your Domain

A quote from a free address

An electrician finishes a site visit, writes up a careful quote, and emails it as a PDF from a free webmail account.

The van carries the business name and a website. The quote arrives from an address at a free provider, with the business name squeezed in and a number on the end because the plain name was taken.

One customer replies asking whether the quote is genuine. Another never sees it, because their office's mail filter held it back. Neither tells the electrician why the job went elsewhere.

The address is the problem in both cases, and it is one of the cheapest problems in the business to fix.

What a free address signals

Anybody can open a free email account with your business name in it, in a couple of minutes. Fraudsters do exactly that.

Invoice fraud, where a criminal sends payment details that appear to come from a real supplier, often relies on addresses nobody can check. Many accounts departments now treat payment instructions from free addresses with suspicion.

An address on your own domain matches your website, and nobody else can open one. It answers the question before the customer has to ask it.

There is a quieter signal too. A free address suggests a side business, whatever the van and the cards say.

Where it causes trouble

• Quotes and invoices, where payment details meet a stranger's caution.
• Larger customers, whose mail filters are often strict about attachments.
• An internet provider's address, which ends when you change provider.
• A former employee's personal account, holding years of customer messages.
• Listings and logins registered to an address the business does not control.

The third catches long-established businesses. The address works for twenty years, then disappears the week the business changes provider.

What your own domain gives you

An address on your domain belongs to the business, not to a provider or a person. Change email provider and the address comes with you.

Staff get their own addresses, and when somebody leaves, their mailbox and its history stay with the business.

Shared addresses such as quotes@ or accounts@ can be read by more than one person, which keeps enquiries moving when somebody is away.

And receiving mail servers can check that a message from your domain really came from you, which is where delivery improves.

G Suite or Office 365

The two usual choices are G Suite from Google and Office 365 from Microsoft. Both host email on your own domain for a few dollars per person per month.

Both include calendars, shared contacts and file storage. The better choice usually depends on what the office already uses: Word and Excel files every day point one way, Google's documents and spreadsheets the other.

Either way, setting it up means changing records in your domain's DNS, the settings that direct mail and visitors to the right servers, so you need access to wherever that is managed.

SPF and DKIM, in plain terms

Two DNS records do most of the work of proving your mail is genuine.

SPF is a single record listing the servers allowed to send mail for your domain. A receiving server checks whether a message came from one of them.

DKIM adds a hidden signature to every message, which the receiving server checks against a key published in your DNS. A message altered on the way, or sent by an impostor, fails the check.

Google and Microsoft both publish the exact records to add. A third record, DMARC, tells receiving servers what to do when the checks fail and sends you reports, and is worth adding once the first two work.

A worked example

A window cleaning company with two vans in the Interior had used the email address from its internet provider for fifteen years. It was on the vans, the cards and every quote.

When the business moved to a new unit and changed provider, the old account was closed and the address went with it.

For three weeks, replies to quotes and repeat bookings bounced, and the website's form kept sending enquiries to an address that no longer existed.

The owners moved to G Suite on the business domain, with a mailbox each and a quotes address that reaches both. SPF and DKIM went in the same afternoon, and the form was pointed at the new address.

Regular customers got a short email from the new address, and the vans, cards and Google listing were updated that month. The next change of provider will not touch the email.

Everything else that sends as you

The mailbox is rarely the only thing sending mail with your domain on it.

The website's contact form, the newsletter service, accounting software that emails invoices and a booking system sending confirmations may all use your address.

Each has to be allowed for in SPF or set up with its own DKIM, or its mail looks forged.

The common mistake is adding a second SPF record for the new provider instead of combining it with the existing one. A domain may have only one, and two make both fail.

Switching without losing mail

Set up the new mailboxes first, and test them before anything else changes.

Then change the MX records, the DNS entries that say where your mail is delivered, on a quiet weekday evening. Most mail settles at the new address within hours.

Keep the old address answering for several months with an automatic reply giving the new one, and import old messages if you want the history in one place.

Finally, change the address everywhere it is printed or registered, from the van to the supplier accounts.

The counter-case

A free address is not a disaster in every case.

Customers who know you personally, such as long-standing clients of a sole practitioner, will not think twice about the address. A brand-new business testing an idea may reasonably start with less.

But anything carrying prices, payment details or your business name to strangers should come from your own domain, with SPF and DKIM in place.

The order to do it in

1. Choose G Suite or Office 365 for the office.
2. Create the mailboxes on your own domain.
3. Add the SPF and DKIM records your provider publishes.
4. Include every service that sends as you.
5. Switch the MX records on a quiet evening.
6. Leave an automatic reply on the old address.
7. Update the address everywhere it appears.

Step four is the one most setups miss. The mailbox works on day one, while the forms and invoices sending from elsewhere start landing in junk without anyone noticing.

Why a bought list would undo the delivery you have just protected is covered in the email list somebody offered to sell you.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.