How to get email on your own domain (you@yourcompany.com)

What "email on your own domain" actually involves

An address like anna@yourcompany.com looks more trustworthy than a free webmail address, keeps working when you change providers, and stays with the company when people come and go. Behind it are three separate parts, and it helps to keep them apart in your head:

• The domain - bought from a registrar and renewed every year (or every few years).
• DNS - the records that tell the rest of the internet which server receives mail for the domain and which servers may send it. Usually managed at the registrar, sometimes elsewhere (for example Cloudflare).
• The mail host - the service that stores your mailboxes, accepts incoming mail, delivers outgoing mail and gives you webmail and settings for mail apps.

These can be three different companies. That is normal, and it's also what makes switching later possible: you can move your mail to another host without touching the domain or your website.

Step 1: get a domain - in the right name

Pick a name that is short, easy to spell over the phone and not easily confused with someone else's. The extension matters less than people think; a country extension (such as .pl or .de) or .com are the usual choices for a business. When you buy it:

• Register it to the company itself, not to the employee, freelancer or agency who happened to click "buy". The registrant is the legal holder of the domain; getting a domain back from a former web designer is a surprisingly common and painful problem.
• Look at the renewal price, not just the first-year price. Registrars often discount the first year, and some extensions cost much more than others to keep.
• Turn on auto-renew and keep a valid payment method on file. An expired domain takes your email down with it - and a lapsed domain can be registered by someone else.
• Protect the registrar account with two-factor sign-in, and give it a contact address that does not depend on the domain itself. If the registrar's renewal warnings go to admin@yourcompany.com and that domain has just expired, nobody reads them.

Step 2: choose a mail host

There are two broad kinds of provider: office suites that bundle email with calendars, documents and video calls, and providers that do email only. Whichever you consider, check:

• Pricing model - per user (common with suites) or per plan with a number of inboxes included. For a team with many role addresses (office@, invoices@, support@) the difference adds up.
• What you need besides mail - shared calendars, documents, chat. If you need them from the same vendor, a suite is the simpler answer.
• Mail apps - does it support the standard protocols (IMAP to read, SMTP to send) so you can use Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail or your phone's mail app?
• Where your data is stored and who processes it - relevant under the GDPR, and something a provider should state plainly in its privacy policy.
• Security basics - DKIM signing with your own domain, two-factor sign-in, separate passwords for mail apps.

Our guide to alternatives to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 goes through these criteria in more detail.

Step 3: publish the DNS records

Your mail host gives you a set of records to add at your DNS provider. A typical set looks like this - always copy the exact values your provider shows you:

yourcompany.com.  MX
  10 mx.mailhost.example.

yourcompany.com.  TXT
  "v=spf1 include:mailhost.example ~all"

s1._domainkey.yourcompany.com.  TXT
  "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=MIIBIjANBg..."

_dmarc.yourcompany.com.  TXT
  "v=DMARC1; p=quarantine"

The details of each record are in our guides to SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and how to add DNS records at your registrar walks through the editors of the common registrars. None of these records are A or AAAA records, so a website on the same domain is not affected.

With AnyMail, the mail server's DNS page lists exactly these records for your domain - including a 2048-bit DKIM key generated for that mail server and a unique ownership TXT record - and checks each one, telling you which still needs fixing. Mail is only sent and accepted for the domain once all of them pass.

Step 4: create your inboxes

Create a mailbox for each person and decide which role addresses you need. A few that most businesses end up with:

• office@ or hello@ for general enquiries,
• invoices@ for incoming bills, so they don't depend on one person's inbox,
• support@ if you answer customers - often handled by several people as a shared inbox.

Role addresses are worth having from day one: they survive staff changes, and they keep personal mailboxes out of your invoices and contracts. On AnyMail, Starter includes one mail server with up to 10 inboxes and Pro up to six mail servers with up to 50 inboxes each; an inbox can be shared with a colleague's AnyMail account as read-only or with permission to reply. A role address doesn't always need an inbox of its own: each inbox can have up to 10 aliases - say, billing@ arriving in invoices@ - that it receives at and can send from, and aliases don't count toward the inbox limit.

Step 5: set up your mail apps

Most hosts offer webmail, and almost all support the two standard protocols for mail apps:

Prefer IMAP over POP3: IMAP keeps mail on the server, so your phone, laptop and webmail all show the same folders. Where your host supports it, create a separate app password for each device instead of typing your main password into every app - if a phone is lost, you revoke that one password and nothing else changes.

AnyMail works this way: each inbox can have app passwords that work for both IMAP (port 993) and SMTP submission (STARTTLS on port 587), and the web app can be installed on desktop and mobile. POP3 is not offered.

Test before you announce the new address

1. Send a message from the new address to a Gmail or Outlook.com account and reply to it.
2. On the received message, open "Show original" (or "View message source") and check that the Authentication-Results header shows spf=pass, dkim=pass and dmarc=pass.
3. Check the whole domain at once with the email authentication checker.
4. Send from your phone and from your computer, to make sure every app is set up for sending, not just reading.

What it typically costs

The domain

A yearly fee that depends on the extension and the registrar. Compare renewal prices, and remember that options such as privacy protection or DNS hosting are sometimes charged separately.

The mail hosting

Office suites are usually priced per user per month, with the price covering the documents, storage and video tools as well. Email-only providers vary: some charge per mailbox, others a flat price per plan or account with a number of mailboxes and limits included. Check what happens to the price when you add role addresses - with per-user pricing, invoices@ may cost as much as a person.

AnyMail's plans

AnyMail charges per plan, not per user. At the time of writing, Starter costs $1.99 per month (one mail server, up to 10 inboxes) and Pro $9.99 per month (up to six mail servers with up to 50 inboxes each, plus the Developer API and webhooks). If you don't have a domain yet, the Subdomain plan ($3.99 per month) gives you addresses on yourname.fromanymail.tech with no DNS to configure, and on the Business plan ($14.99 per month plus the domain's yearly price) we register a domain in your name and set up the mail for you. Current prices are in the pricing section.

Common pitfalls

• Two SPF records. A domain may have only one; adding a second one for the new host breaks both. Merge them into one record.
• Old MX records left behind. If the previous provider's MX records stay in place, some mail keeps going there. Remove them once you have switched.
• Forgotten senders. Your invoicing system, web shop or newsletter tool may send as your domain too. Add them to SPF and set up DKIM for them before you enforce DMARC, or their mail ends up in spam.
• A proxied DNS name. In Cloudflare, names used for mail must be "DNS only", not proxied.
• Editing DNS in the wrong place. If the domain's name servers point elsewhere, records added at the registrar have no effect - see how to add DNS records.
• Sending a mass mailing on day one. A new domain has no reputation. Start with normal correspondence and grow volume gradually - see why emails go to spam.
• Everything depends on one person. Keep the registrar, DNS and mail host logins in a company password manager, with at least two people who can get in.