An address like firmapopescu2019@gmail.com works to start with. As the business grows, the problems show up: customers aren't sure it's really you writing, employees leave with the address, and messages sent from the website end up in spam. An address on your company's domain, such as office@firma-ta.ro, solves most of them.
In short
- An address on your domain looks professional and belongs to the company, not to one person.
- You control the addresses: you create them, delete them and forward them when someone leaves.
- With SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up correctly, your messages are easier to recognize as legitimate.
- You read it on your phone and in Outlook just like Gmail, even in the Gmail app.
Trust
A customer who receives a quote from office@firma-ta.ro sees the company name in the address and can check it against the website. A generic Gmail or Yahoo address can be created by anyone in two minutes, which is also why it's the favorite of people pretending to be other companies. For invoices, quotes and contracts, the difference matters.
Control over your addresses
With email on your domain, the addresses belong to the company:
- you create one address for each role:
office@,comenzi@(orders),contabilitate@(accounting); - when a colleague leaves, you change the password, forward the address to someone else and don't lose the correspondence with customers;
- if you move to another email provider, the addresses stay the same, because the domain is yours.
With a personal Gmail address, the account belongs to the person who created it.
Why messages end up in spam
Major email providers check whether a message really comes from the domain it shows. To do this, they use three DNS records:
- SPF states which servers are allowed to send email for your domain;
- DKIM adds a signature to every message that proves it wasn't altered along the way;
- DMARC tells the recipient what to do with messages that fail these checks, and can send you reports.
Gmail and Yahoo require these checks from senders who send a lot of messages. At NBT Host, SPF, DKIM and DMARC are set up automatically when the domain uses our nameservers. The full explanation, and the other mistakes that send messages to spam: emails going to spam: SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
Your website forms, too
A contact form that sends emails “from” a Gmail address, but from the website's server, fails exactly the checks above. With an address on your domain and a correct SPF record, form emails and store order emails arrive far more reliably.
Using it day to day
Email on your domain doesn't force you to switch apps:
- in your browser, through Webmail (the guide);
- on iPhone in the Mail app (the guide), on Android right in the Gmail app (the guide);
- on your computer, in Outlook (the guide).
The connection uses encrypted IMAP and SMTP, and your messages are the same on every device.
How much it costs
At NBT Host, email on your domain is included in every hosting plan: 10 addresses on the Starter plan, unlimited on the others. Mailboxes share the plan's disk space with the website. The technical details (ports, spam filter, forwarding, autoresponder) are on the email on your domain page. You can create your first address in a few minutes with the setup guide.
When something else makes sense
If your company already works in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 (shared documents, calendar, video calls), you can keep your email there and host only the website with us: you set the MX records in the DNS zone editor. For newsletters to large lists, use an email marketing service; hosting has a limit on messages per hour, explained in the limits of a hosting plan.