Guide to Business Email
Choosing an email service for a small business, setting it up properly and keeping it secure
A PROPER BUSINESS ADDRESS
An email address using your own business name, such as info@smithjoinery.co.uk, costs very little and makes a real difference. It looks professional, it’s easy for customers to remember, and it reassures them that they’re dealing with a genuine business at a time when scams are everywhere.
Just as importantly, the address belongs to your business rather than to an email provider, a broadband company or a member of staff. You can change provider, take on staff or see them leave, and the address stays the same.
WHAT TO AVOID
- A free personal address, such as a Gmail or Hotmail account, for business. It looks less professional, and customers’ details end up in a personal account that’s hard to hand over or close down properly.
- A broadband provider address, such as BT or Sky. It ties your business to that provider, and several providers have stopped running email themselves. Our Guide to Email Addresses explains more.
- Sharing one login between several people. Each person should have their own account, so that you can see who did what, and remove access when someone leaves.
ONE ADDRESS, SEVERAL NAMES
Most services let one person receive email sent to several addresses, such as info@, accounts@ and your own name, at no extra cost. You only pay for each person who needs their own mailbox.
CHOOSING A SERVICE
These three services are reliable, widely used, and well regarded by the companies that filter spam, so emails you send through them are rarely mistaken for junk.
| Service | Price per person, per month | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 | Business Basic from £5.40. Business Standard, which adds the desktop versions of Word, Excel and Outlook, from £10.80. | Businesses that rely on Word, Excel and Outlook, or work with customers who do. |
| Google Workspace | Business Starter from £5.90. Business Standard from £11.80. | Businesses that prefer to work in a web browser, or already use Google Docs and Sheets. |
| Zoho Mail | Mail Lite from around £1. | Sole traders and small teams who mainly need email and want to keep costs down. |
Prices exclude VAT and assume a yearly commitment; paying month by month costs around 20% more. Correct as of October 2026.
WHICH SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?
For most small businesses, Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Google Workspace Business Starter is the natural choice. Both include generous storage, calendars, contacts, video calls and file sharing, and they work well on any computer, phone or tablet.
If you mainly need email and want to keep costs as low as possible, Zoho Mail is excellent value. We use it ourselves, and it has proved reliable.
Whichever you choose, you’ll also need a domain name, which you buy separately. Our Guide to Domains and Web Hosting explains how to choose one.
SETTING IT UP PROPERLY
Email was never designed with security in mind, so it’s easy for a scammer to send a message that appears to come from your address. To combat this, the big email providers now check every message against a few settings, known as records, that you add to your domain name.
| Record | What it does |
|---|---|
| SPF | Lists the services that are allowed to send email using your domain. |
| DKIM | Adds a digital signature to each email, proving it came from you and hasn’t been changed. |
| DMARC | Tells other providers what to do with emails that fail these checks, and sends you reports so that you can spot problems. |
Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft now insist on these records for anyone sending email in quantity, and messages without them are increasingly sent to junk folders or rejected, whatever their size. They also make it much harder for scammers to impersonate your business.
DON’T FORGET YOUR OTHER SERVICES
Your email service isn’t the only thing that sends email in your name. Your website’s contact form, your accounting software and any mailing list service all need to be included in these settings too. If they’re missed, their emails can quietly go astray, and it may be some time before you notice.
KEEPING IT SECURE
Your business email is often the key to everything else, from your bank to your website, so it’s worth protecting carefully.
- Turn on two-step verification for every account, so that a stolen password isn’t enough on its own.
- Keep the main administrator account in the business owner’s name, rather than with a member of staff or the person who set it up.
- When someone leaves, remove their access straight away, but keep their mailbox, or pass it to a colleague, so that nothing sent to them is lost.
- Be wary of emails asking you to change payment details or pay an urgent invoice. If in doubt, phone the sender on a number you already have.
- Consider a separate backup of your email. The providers keep deleted messages for a limited time only, so a mistake or a malicious deletion can mean losing them for good.
WE CAN HELP
We can help you choose the right service, set up your email and the records that go with it, move your existing emails across and make sure everything is secure.
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