Why You Shouldn't Use a Free or ISP-provided Email Address for Business
If you're like a lot of people, you use an email address provided by your internet service provider (ISP), even if you have a company web site. It's free and convenient, and you save time and trouble not checking email from multiple accounts, right?
Wrong!
You probably already know that if you change ISP's (for instance, switch from AOL to Verizon), your email address will change. But what if you're perfectly happy with your ISP and have no plans to change? Doesn't matter! For example, how many people had email addresses @mediaone.net? Then in February, 2002 Media One became AT&T, and all of a sudden everybody's address changed to @attbi.com. People didn't get a choice; they had to notify every mailing list, business associate and friend about the address change if they wanted to continue receiving email from them. This happened AGAIN, in July of 2003, when all the @attbi.com addresses were changed to @comcast.net, and all those people had to notify everybody a second time. (Note: this information is true for Western Massachusetts; I don't know what happened in other parts of the country).
It was even worse for anyone with their email address printed on their business cards or letterhead. Not only did they have to have everything reprinted, but customers who had the old information saw their emails bounce back, making it look like the recipient had gone out of business.
Besides having no control over address changes, if you actually have a company URL registered, it's really bad from a marketing and branding standpoint to use a free or ISP-provided account. Instead of your email address reinforcing your company name, it's providing free advertising for AOL (or GMail, or Verizon, etc.).
So how can you avoid the whole problem? It's simple.
Step 1
Register your own URL. For anywhere from $8 to $35 a year, you can register a web address. You DO NOT have to have an actual web site to use a domain name as part of your email address (you@yourdomain.com).
Step 2
Purchase a hosting account and create an email address there. If you don't have website, get the smallest, least expensive hosting account you can relative to the number of email addresses you want.
Step 3
Set up the email at your hosting acount to automatically forward to your existing email address, or set up your computer to download from the second account at the same time it downloads from the account(s) you currently use. Most email software can automatically sort incoming mail into different folders (very handy to keep personal and business email separate without having to log in to accounts or sort through your in-box). Depending onon how you set up the email at the hosting account, you may also be able to check it through a web browser.
If you already have a web site
and aren't using it for email, set up an account and start using it. Again, you can have it forward to another account, set up your computer to download it, or check it online at your website.
This way you can have the same email address for as long as you keep your domain registered (whether or not you have a web site) and your email address will be in your control no matter what happens to your ISP. If you have a web site, it shouldn't cost you anything (other than possibly a fee to have someone set it up for you). If you don't have a web site, it will cost roughly $45-60/year to keep the URL registered and have an email-only hosting. It is well worth the cost, especially if you have a business, to have a permanent email address that is fully in your control and reinforces your company name.
