Business Email on Your Own Domain: Why Your Company Needs It and Which Option to Choose

An address such as sales@yourcompany.com tells customers the message really comes from your company, and it keeps the mailbox under the company's control rather than an employee's. There are two main ways to get one: the mailboxes included with a web hosting plan, or a dedicated business email plan. This article explains why it matters and how to choose between the two.

Why not keep using a free email address?

• Trust and impersonation. Anyone can open a free mailbox with your company's name in it, so customers cannot tell the real address from a fake one. Nobody else can send from your own domain, and the authentication records you publish for it let receiving servers check that.
• The company owns the mailbox. When an employee leaves, an administrator can reset the password, keep the message history and forward new mail to a colleague. A personal free account leaves with its owner.
• Role addresses survive staff changes. Addresses such as info@, sales@, support@ or accounts@ can pass from one person to another without customers ever noticing.
• Deliverability you control. Large mailbox providers increasingly expect senders to authenticate their domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC. On your own domain you publish these records yourself, which also makes it much harder for others to send convincing fakes in your name.
• Every message promotes the brand. The domain in each address repeats your website's name to everyone you write to.

Option 1: the mailboxes included with web hosting

Shared hosting plans come with email accounts on the same server as the website. According to EngHosting's plan pages, the shared hosting plans range from 5 email accounts on the Personal plan to unlimited email on the Professional plan, all managed from the same cPanel account. This suits a small team with a light website: one account, one bill and one control panel.

The trade-off is that email shares the account with the website. Storage is shared, a hacked website can send spam that damages the account's mail reputation, and if you later move the website to another host or to a VPS, the email has to move with it.

Option 2: a dedicated business email plan

A dedicated email plan keeps mail separate from the website, so redesigning the site, changing developer or moving the site to a VPS never touches anyone's inbox. According to the plan pages, each of the five EngHosting email hosting plans includes email on your own domain, webmail, management from cPanel, IMAP, POP3 and SMTP, SSL-secured connections and spam protection. The plans differ mainly in size and extras:

On the two largest plans the free domain can be a .com, .net or .org. Current prices and full details are on the plan page.

Which option fits your company?

• Count real people first, then role addresses. Some role addresses can be forwarders that deliver into an existing mailbox instead of separate accounts; ask support how they count on your plan.
• Estimate storage honestly. Teams that exchange drawings, scanned documents or large attachments fill mailboxes far faster than a sales team sending short replies.
• Decide how independent email must be. If an outside agency manages the website, or the site may move to a VPS, a separate email plan spares you from touching email every time the site changes.
• Think about backups. Daily backup is listed on the Professional email plan and above. Without it, keep your own copies, for example with an IMAP mail program that stores messages on the computer.
• Do you already have a domain? The Professional plan and above list a free domain. Either way, choose the domain name carefully, because it will appear in every address.

A simple rule: a small business with a handful of people and a simple site can start with the mailboxes in its hosting plan, while a company for which email is business-critical, or whose website is run by someone else, is better served by a dedicated email plan. If you are planning the website and domain at the same time, see how to plan hosting, email and domain for a company.

Moving from free email without losing messages

• Create the new mailboxes and set up the DNS records first, then test sending and receiving.
• Bring old messages across by adding both accounts to one mail program over IMAP and dragging the folders from one to the other.
• Keep the old address active for a few months with an auto-reply or forwarding that points to the new one.
• Update the address on invoices, business cards, social profiles, map listings and any online accounts that use it as a login.

The technical part, including MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records and connecting Outlook and phones, is covered step by step in our business email setup guide.

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