A business email address is one of the cheapest upgrades a small business can make, and one of the most visible. Every quote, invoice and reply you send carries it. If it says smithplumbing1974@hotmail.co.uk, customers notice, even if they never mention it.
Why a free email address looks amateur
Fairly or not, a free webmail address reads as a side hustle. It says the business has not got round to the basics. That matters most on bigger jobs, where a customer is weighing up who to trust with thousands of pounds, and with commercial clients, who may be comparing you with firms that have their own domain.
There are practical problems too. Free addresses with numbers or odd spellings are hard to read out over the phone. They look similar to the addresses scammers use, so some customers are warier of links and attachments from them. And the account belongs to whoever set it up, which becomes a problem when a business changes hands or a staff member leaves.
What a business email address gives you
- An address that matches your website: if your site is smithplumbing.co.uk, your email is jo@smithplumbing.co.uk.
- More credibility on quotes, invoices and replies.
- Addresses you can hand out by role (quotes@, accounts@) and redirect as the business changes.
- Continuity. Your address stays the same if you move email provider, because the domain is yours.
- Better delivery. Properly configured business email is less likely to land in spam than a new free account sending lots of quotes.
Your options
| Option | Good for | Things to check |
|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace | People who already like Gmail | Priced per user, per month; check current UK pricing and plan limits |
| Microsoft 365 | People who use Outlook, Word and Excel | Priced per user, per month; business plans can include Office apps |
| Mailbox included with your hosting | Very small businesses on a budget | Storage limits, spam filtering and how well it works on a phone |
| Email forwarding only | Receiving mail at a nice address while replying from elsewhere | Replies can show your old address unless configured carefully |
| Your web provider’s email bolt-on | People who want it set up and managed for them | Price per mailbox and who you ring when it breaks |
How the costs work
Business email is almost always priced per mailbox, per month. One address for a sole trader is cheap; ten addresses for ten staff adds up. Prices from the big providers change, so check their current UK pricing rather than relying on an old blog post, and look at what each plan includes before choosing the cheapest.
You also need the domain itself, which is a separate annual cost. If you have a website on your own domain already, you have this.
For what it is worth, we offer business email as a bolt-on at £5/month per mailbox, set up on your phone for you. It is a convenience, not a requirement: plenty of people set up Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 themselves in an afternoon.
Setting it up without breaking anything
- Choose the provider and create the mailbox.
- Add the records the provider gives you (MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC) to your domain’s settings. These tell the world where your email lives and that it is genuinely from you.
- Add the account to your phone’s mail app, so it arrives where you actually read things.
- Set up forwarding from your old free address for a while, so nothing gets lost.
- Update the address on your website, Google Business Profile, van, invoices and quote templates.
- Send a test email to a friend on Gmail and one on Outlook and check it does not land in spam.
Which address to use
For a sole trader, your first name at your domain (jo@) is friendly and personal. For a business with a few people, a general address like hello@ or quotes@ that more than one person can see is useful, because enquiries do not get stuck in the inbox of someone on holiday. Avoid info@ as your only address if you can: it is heavily targeted by spam.