What’s in a Name? When a Business Email Address Makes Sense Over a Free Service Provider Account

As a professional process server running your own business, you will be faced with a decision regarding your business email. Will you acquire a custom domain based on your business or will you choose a free email service provider, such as Gmail, Yahoo, or AOL? Your choice will impact your expenses and how prospective clients and other process serving companies perceive your business. In this article, we will discuss when you should set up and use a domain email address for your business instead of a free service provider.

What is a Free Service Provider Email versus a Business Email Address?

You likely have a Gmail, Yahoo, or similar account for your personal email. These emails are branded with the name of the free service provider – JohnDoe@gmail.com. In contrast, a business email address will use your domain name – johnD@yourcompany.com.

When Should I use a Free Email Service?

If you intend to operate mainly as a server in the field for process serving companies, a free service provider account is perfectly acceptable. Or, if you are just starting out, the investment in a business domain simply may not be within your budget. If you decide to use a free email service provider to get started, use your company name instead of your own name or any kind of nickname or alias of a personal nature. For example, create an email such as yourcompany@gmail.com instead of john@gmail.com or dolphinsfan65@yahoo.com. You want to create an image of professionalism, portraying that being a process server isn’t just a new or temporary endeavor for you.

Why Should I use a Domain Email Address?

If you have a client-facing process serving business, you should consider a business email as essential, because a business email provides:

• A More Professional Impression: A business email address gives a great first professional impression and strengthens your brand. Many clients expect your business to have a domain name and a website and will believe it shows credibility as a stable, “in for the long haul” business. For example, if you are at a networking event to connect with attorneys and paralegals, they will collect business cards from multiple people, including your potential competitors. After the event, as they review those cards to add information to their contact lists, they notice you have a Gmail or AOL account, while your competitor has a business email address. How do you think they will react to your email versus your competitor’s email? They may start to question your credibility and might choose your competitor over you when they have a job.
• Insulation from Changes in Provider Reputation: The reality is that free service providers gain and lose popularity and reputation and those changes can impact the efficacy of what is probably your main communication channel. The email account you set up 20 years ago – AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail – is not considered cutting edge now with the general public and in professional circles. In fact, most people view emails from those domains as highly suspect for spam email and clients may miss your emails if they are barred at their firm’s firewall or thrown into a spam email folder. Even worse, your free service provider could go out of business! Think it can’t happen? Remember cis.com, compuserve.com, rocketmail.com, onebox.com, usa.net – just to name a few? Now you’ll have to “resell” yourself with a new email address. While Gmail seems to be the most used free service provider now, what will its status be ten years from now? As a professional, using a custom domain for your business email address insulates you from these changes in free service provider reputations and trends.
• Flexibility: With a free service provider, you will likely end up setting up one email – yourcompany@gmail.com – that will receive all of your email. But as you grow, this will become a hassle. Will you have multiple employees now trying to use that one account? If you want to add more emails what will those addresses be – submitjobstoyourcompany@gmail.com? With a business domain email address, you can set up multiple emails easily and the names can be more intuitive with your company name as the domain – submitjob@yourcompay.com. You can also create email aliases or email forwarders. For example, you can create your main email john@yourcompany.com and then create the aliases service@yourcompany.com or info@yourcompany.com that will forward to your main email address. Your business will appear organized and professional, with an indeterminate number of employees.
• Freedom: Owning your own domain means you are no longer tied to a specific email service provider. You have the freedom to use any email host (e.g. Outlook) and change hosting providers (e.g. GoDaddy, Wix) as you like. Just be sure to keep track of your user ID and password for your hosting provider, so you can change providers or allow access to website designers as needed.

How do you Get a Domain and Set Up a Business Email Address?

A business email address will be based on a domain name that you purchase. You can purchase a domain from many places, such as GoDaddy, Wix, and NameCheap. If you are starting your own company and thinking about company names, you’ll want to check registered business names in your state, and you should look at available domain names too! When you decide on your business name, purchase the domain name right away. You can get a website and business email address then at your leisure, when you feel the time is right. There are many companies that can design and host your website, including DBS. With a website most hosting companies will provide you with an included number of email addresses. DBS offers 5 email address associated with your domain.

Final Thoughts

As a professional process server, your email address is important. It is how you communicate to your clients and is part of your business card first impression. Whether you choose to do a custom domain or use a free email service provider, your email address should convey professionalism and dependability.