Want to create a professional business email address for free?
a business email address uses your company name instead of the generic gmail, outlook or yahoo account.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a free business email address in less than 5 minutes.
What is a Business Email Address and Why You Need it?
a professional business email address has your company’s custom domain name instead of the generic gmail or yahoo account, for example: john@stargardening.com
most beginners use generic free business email accounts without a domain name which is not very professional. for example: john.smith2019@gmail.com or jsmithfromstargardening@yahoo.com.
Because anyone can create these generic email accounts, it becomes more difficult for customers and other businesses to trust such email addresses as legitimate business email accounts.
Below are the top 4 reasons why you need a professional email address for your business:
- a personalized business email address looks more professional.
- it’s also short and easy to remember.
- a professional business email address helps you earn customer trust as a legitimate business.
- sending emails with your own domain name allows you to promote your brand with every email you send.
The best part is that you can get your own personalized business email address for free, which means there’s no excuse not to get one.
If you want your customers and other businesses to take you seriously, you need to start using a professional email address right away.
what do you need to create a business email address?
You will need to have a domain name and website to create a free business email address.
After that, you’ll need an email service provider to handle your business emails.
There are a few different solutions you can use to create a professional business email address.
We will show you two different methods, and you can choose the one that best suits your needs.
The first method is free and fairly easy to set up, while the second method has a small fee but offers much more features.
video tutorial
If you prefer written instructions, read on.
method 1. create a free business email address
This method is easy and available to almost everyone with a website. allows you to create a business email address for free.
When creating a website for a small business, you will need to purchase a domain and sign up for web hosting.
what most beginners don’t know is that many wordpress hosting companies offer a free business email service as part of the package.
Typically, a domain name costs $14.99 per year and website hosting starts at $7.99 per month. if you used a paid email service, you can add another $5 per email account.
Fortunately, bluehost, one of the world’s largest wordpress hosting companies, has agreed to offer beginner wp users a free domain name and 60% off hosting.
This means you can start your business website for $2.75 a month (and it comes with a free business email address).
here are the complete step by step instructions to create your free business email address with bluehost.
step 1. set up your business address (domain name)
First, you need to visit the bluehost website and click the green “get started now” button.
This will bring you to a pricing page where you need to click on the ‘Select’ button below the plan you want to use.
Basic and Plus plans are most popular with small businesses just starting out.
After selecting your plan, you will be asked to choose your domain name. You need to enter your business name and click on the ‘Next’ button.
Bluehost will now check to see if a domain name matching your business name is available. If it is not, then it will show you some alternative suggestions, or you can look for another domain name.
Here are some quick tips for choosing the perfect domain name for your business email address.
- always choose a .com domain name. see our article on the difference between .com and .net domain names for more information.
- keep your domain name short and easy to remember and pronounce.
- do not use numbers or hyphens in your domain name
- try to use keywords and business location in your domain name to make it unique. for example, if stargardening.com is not available, search for stargardeninghouston.com
For more tips, check out our guide on choosing the best domain name for your business.
Choosing a good domain name is crucial for your business, but don’t spend too much time on it or you’ll never get past this step.
After choosing your domain name, you will need to add your account information and finalize your package information to complete the process.
On this screen, you’ll see the optional extras you can purchase. we do not recommend choosing them at this time. if you need them, you can always add them later from your account.
Lastly, you need to enter your payment information to finish the purchase.
You will receive an email with details on how to login to your web hosting control panel. this is where you manage everything, including website administration, business email accounts, and other settings.
step 2. create your free business email address
in the control panel of your hosting account, you must click on the button ’email & office tab’ and then click the ‘manage’ button.
Next, click on the ‘Create’ button to make your free business email address.
Now, you can enter a username for your email account. The username will appear before the @ sign in your email address.
You also need to enter a password for your email account. you can click the ‘generate’ button to create a strong and unique password automatically.
When you’re finished, scroll down and click the ‘Create’ button.
bluehost will now create the email account and you will see a success message.
step 3. use your business email account
Now that you’ve created your free business email account, the next step is to learn how to use it to send and receive email.
after creating your email, you will be redirected to the “email accounts” page. you will see your newly created email address listed.
click the ‘verify email’ link and bluehost will take you to a webmail interface.
Click on the ‘Open’ button to open your webmail inbox.
This is a good option if you don’t want to use an email client on your desktop or a mobile app on your smartphone. The downside is that you will have to log into your hosting account each time you want to check your email.
To connect your email with your mobile phone or computer, you can follow the instructions to set it up on the right side of the screen.
note: the process of creating a business email is pretty much the same with other web hosting providers that offer cpanel such as siteground, hostgator, dreamhost, and inmotion hosting.
method 2. create a business email address using google workspace (formerly g suite)
google offers professional business email addresses with google workspace (formerly g suite), which includes gmail along with other productivity tools like docs, drive, and calendar for business.
This method is not free, but it allows you to use a gmail account for your professional business email under your own business name.
Although it has a small cost, it has many advantages:
- of spam.
- your website hosting company has shared server resources. this means they don’t want you to send too many emails. gmail, on the other hand, will allow you to send up to 2000 emails per day.
We use g suite for our business email address here at wpbeginner. comes with the best email functionality you need, including a smart spam filter, conditional email forwarding, two-factor authentication for security, and much more.
That said, let’s take a look at how to set up a business email address using g suite.
step 1. sign up for a google workspace account
google workspace starter plan costs $6 per user each month. gives you access to gmail, docs, drive, calendar and audio/video conferences with 30gb of cloud storage for each user.
You’ll also need a domain name, which you can purchase during registration. If you already have a domain name and website, you can use your existing domain with g suite.
To get started, simply visit the google workspace website and click the get started button.
On the next screen, you will be asked to enter your business name, the number of employees, and the country where you are located. You can choose just yourself for 1 user account, or choose the number of employees.
Note: You will be charged for each user account, so it is better to start small. You can always add more users when needed.
click the button below to continue.
In the next step, you will be asked to enter your personal contact information, including your name and email address.
After that, you will be asked to choose a domain name. If you already have a domain name, then click on ‘Yes I have one I can use’.
If you don’t have a domain, click “no, I need one” to register a domain name.
If you need to register a new domain name, then you will be charged separately for registering a new domain name. The cost of a domain name will be displayed on the screen and usually starts from $14.99.
If you are using an existing domain name, you will need to verify that you are the owner of that domain name. we’ll show you how to do this later in this article.
After choosing your domain name, you will be prompted to create your user account by entering a username and password.
This username will also be your first business email address, so choose a username that you want to use as your business email address.
After that, you will see a success message and a button to continue with the setup.
Step 2. Setting up Business Email with Google Workspace / G Suite
In this step, you will complete the g suite setup by adding users and connecting them to your website or domain name.
On the setup screen, you will be prompted to add more people to your account. If you want to create more accounts for your employees or departments, you can do so here.
You can also just click “I have added all user email addresses” and click the “next” button.
remember, you can always add more users to your account and create their email addresses later when needed.
If you are using G Suite with an existing domain name, then you will be asked to verify that you own that domain name. To do that, you will now see an HTML code snippet that you need to add to your website.
There are other ways to verify your ownership as well. You can upload an HTML file to your website using an FTP client or file manager app in your hosting account dashboard.
If you don’t have a website, you can use the mx record method to verify your ownership of the domain name. you’ll see step-by-step instructions for doing this once you choose this method.
For the sake of this article, we’ll assume you already have a wordpress website, and we’ll show you how to add the verification html code snippet in wordpress.
First, go to the admin area of your wordpress website to install and activate the plugin for inserting headers and footers. For more details, check out our step-by-step guide on how to install a wordpress plugin.
After activation, go to the settings » insert headers and footers page and paste the html code you copied from g suite into the ‘scripts in header’ section.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Now go back to your g suite settings screen and click the checkbox that says “I added the meta tag to my home page”.
After that, you will be asked to enter MX record entries for your domain name. We will show you how to do that in the next step.
step 3. add domain mx records
note: this section is for users with existing domain names and websites. if you registered a new domain name through google then you don’t need to read this.
Domain names tell Internet servers where to look for information. Since your domain name is not registered with Google, your emails will reach your domain name, but not Google’s servers.
You will need to set up the correct mx records in your domain name settings so that google’s servers can send and receive email for your business.
To do this, you’ll need to sign in to your web hosting account or domain registrar account.
we have created a detailed guide covering how to change mx records for your website which covers all registrars.
For this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add mx records on bluehost, but the basic setup is the same on all hosts and domain registrars. basically it will look for dns settings under your domain name.
login to your bluehost hosting control panel and click on the ‘domains’ tab. then click the ‘manage’ button next to your domain name.
On the next page, click on the ‘DNS’ tab. Bluehost will now open your DNS zone editor.
You need to switch back to your G Suite setup screen and check the box that says ‘I have opened the control panel of my domain name’.
It will now show you the MX records that you need to enter. You will also see a link to the documentation which shows you how to add these records to dozens of hosting and domain services provider.
This is how you will add this information to your bluehost dns configuration:
Click on ‘Add Record’ button to save it. After that, repeat the process to add all five lines as MX records.
once you’re done, go back to g suite settings and check the box next to “created the new mx records”.
You will be asked to delete any existing MX records still pointing to your website hosting or domain name registrar.
To do this, you need to go back to your dns zone editor and scroll down to the mx records section. you’ll see the mx records you created earlier along with an older mx record that still points to your website.
Click on the delete button next to the old MX record to delete it.
after that, go back to the g suite settings screen and check the box that says “delete existing mx records”.
You will now be asked to save your MX records. For some providers, once you add MX records they are already saved, for others you may need to manually save MX records.
once you have saved mx records, check the box that says “I have saved mx records” in the g suite settings.
After that, you need to click on the ‘Verify domain and setup email’ button to exit the setup wizard.
step 4. manage email in g suite
g suite makes it very easy to manage your email account. you can simply visit the gmail website to check your email inbox or use the official gmail apps on your phone to send and receive new emails.
You will need to log in with your company email address as your username.
To create more business email addresses, simply go to the g suite admin console. From here you can add new users, increase the email storage space in your email account, make payments, and adjust your g suite account settings.
Business Email Address FAQs
The following are some of the most frequently asked questions from our users regarding business email addresses and how to use them.
1. Can I create more personalized email addresses for my company for free?
if you’re using bluehost, then yes, you can go ahead and create more email accounts for free (you get 5 email accounts with basic and unlimited accounts with plus and choice plus hosting plans).
If you’re using g suite, you can create email aliases, which are separate addresses for the same email account. however, if you want to add a different email account or a new employee, you will be charged according to your plan.
2. can i create free business email without domain?
No, you cannot create a free business email account without an email domain. You can create a free email account with Gmail or Hotmail, but it won’t use your business name, so customers and other businesses won’t see it as a business email address.
3. can i use desktop and mobile email apps with my custom branded email address?
yes, you can use your business email address with any mobile or desktop email app like microsoft outlook, thunderbird, airmail, etc.
Most of these applications can automatically determine your mail settings. you can also get this setting from bluehost or g suite documentation.
4. can I switch my free business email account to another provider if needed?
yes, you can switch to any other email service, website host or domain registrar and take your business email address with you. In addition to Google Workspace, there are also other providers of professional email addresses such as Microsoft Office 365, Zoho Mail, Protonmail, Titan, etc.
5. what are some examples of business email addresses i should use?
It depends on the needs of your business. for example:
- You can create a custom branded email for yourself or individual employees like: john@stargardening.com
- You can set up a business email account for departments like sales, support, human resources etc sales@stargardening.com
6. can i create a free business email address without creating a website?
yes, you can. however, you will still need to pay for website hosting because you get the email service and domain name for free with your hosting package.
Once you’ve signed up, you can choose a domain and then simply create your email address.
7. Can I use my business email address to send bulk emails from my website?
yes, we always recommend sending your website emails via smtp to ensure the best email deliverability.
for smaller websites and online stores, you can use gmail smtp servers to power your website emails.
however, for larger websites, it will exceed the smtp limits of your email hosting provider. in that case you will need a third party smtp service with reliable uptime.
For advanced bulk email marketing features, we recommend using a suitable email marketing service along with your business email address, so you can set up features like autoresponders, marketing automation, and more.
That’s it, we hope this article helped you learn how to create a free business email address or create a professional business address with g suite.
You can also check out our guide on how to get a free business phone number for your online business.
if you find that emails from your website are not being delivered, please refer to our guide on how to fix wordpress not sending email issue.
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