A Guide to Choosing a Domain Name and Email Server

Publication Date: 2024.05.10

Email is one of the essential requirements for a new business. If you are interested in getting a custom email for your business but have no idea where to start and how to get it, let us guide you through this article.

Why Does a Company Need a Custom Email Address?

Although creating a personal email for business use is cost-saving, it doesn’t look official and professional. So it is not recommended to use this method.

➤Reason #1 – Enhance the Reliability of The Company

It represents your business online, similar to how a physical address shows its location. It helps you look more professional and gain more credibility in the market and others can recognize your brand easily through the email address. Imagine an investment agent sending you an email with an attachment by personal mail, will you still open the attachment?

With a custom email address, you can get consistency across various channels by creating addresses for different departments. Your customer will get to know who should he look for according to the email address. For example, to get a quotation he just needs to send his inquiry to sales@xxx.com.

➤Reason #2 – Stability

Using the free personal mail might have a risk when the service provider decides to end the free version, your email might get removed directly by the service providers, but if you are using a custom email address, you can just switch the service providers anytime.

➤Reason #3 – Enhance Brand Awareness

Many organizations choose to use their brand name as their domain name so that others can recognize and identify your brand. Utilizing the brand name as the domain name is one of the effective ways to market and promote your brand/company.

➤Reason #4 – Confidential

Asking staff to use personal email accounts for customer communication is problematic. When employees resign, the company has no authority to request them to transfer work-related emails, as the email accounts belong to the employees; it could result in confidential information leaks. Moreover, if customers exclusively interact with specific employees, the company risks losing those customer connections when those employees leave. So, providing employees with a custom company email account can minimize these risks.

Preparation Prior to Getting a Custom Email Address

To create a custom email address, you need to choose your ideal hosting provider and design a domain name.

➤Hosting provider

Most of the web hosting providers will provide email hosting servers as well. An email hosting provider offers the necessary infrastructure to send, route, accept, and manage the receipt of email messages. Here are some ways to get a hosting server.

➤Domain Name

Most companies use their brand name as the domain name for recognition. A brand-matching domain boosts recall and professionalism online, much like an ideal physical location attracts customers offline. E.g., sales@tscloud.com.hk, where tscloud.com.hk is the domain.

You can get a domain by subscribing to a mail server provider or domain provider. Most mail server providers offer domain registration along with other server or productivity tools in their packages. This bundling of services makes it convenient for businesses to manage their domain name and email solutions from a single provider.

How To Choose The Right Mail Server?

To get an ideal mail server, there are a few criteria to be fulfilled:

➤#1 Cost-effectiveness

Cost will be one of the concerns when picking a mail server. Not just the monthly or yearly fees, but also the initial cost upon sign-up. If you get a mail server from a company that includes domain registration and other server or cloud-based productivity tools in their package, those service providers usually give stable quality and good services at a reasonable cost. Building a mail server often needs a big upfront payment for equipment and software, high labor costs plus ongoing costs later to keep maintaining and managing it.

➤#2 Capacity

The available capacity of the mail server is also an important aspect to confirm before signing up. Select a suitable plan based on your company’s size to accommodate multiple users.

➤#3 Secure Security

An insecure mail server may lead to company information leaks and other issues. Even if it is not the responsibility of the company, it can cause significant damage to the reputation; thus, secure security is a main priority to be concerned.

➤#4 Support

Don’t worry if your company doesn’t have expert IT staff. Choose the right provider or plan that offers comprehensive support for setting up the server and troubleshooting any issues. Relying solely on manuals or email support could lead to delays or even business disruptions if you need assistance. Selecting the right vendor that provides multiple support channels, such as phone support, will give you greater peace of mind.

➤#5 One-stop Services

If you desire to get more than just email, considering a cloud-based productivity suite could be a good option. It provides various collaboration tools like chat, video conferencing, and more – not just email. Compared to building separate systems for each business need, implementing a cloud-based productivity suite is more cost-effective.

How to Choose The Right Domain Name?

How do you determine an independent domain name? The following introduces the types of domain names and key considerations.

➤#1 Domain Extension

A domain extension is the last part of a domain name. Some well-known extensions are .com, .info, and .net. Pick an extension based on the intended purpose of the website. The .com extension is for commercial websites or businesses, while .info is for informational websites. The .net extension is for online stores and is easy to obtain compared to the others. Some domain extensions have specific requirements to be purchased. For example, the .com.hk extension requires the company to be registered in Malaysia. This requirement makes these extensions more reliable than others without such conditions.

➤#2 Key Considerations

Try to register your brand name as your domain. It will make it easier for people to find you online and connect your business to your website. If possible, keep the domain name between 5 and 7 characters long by using 2 or 3 words for better recognition.

Sample of Email

Employees should have separate email addresses for personal and work use. This separation will make it easier for employees to manage their work emails. Companies can choose to create different work email addresses for various purposes, such as info@domainname for product information, sales@domainname for purchases, and support@domainname for customer support.

Examples:

• Personal Email Address 1: joyce@domain.com
• Personal Email Address 2: irene@domain.com
• Business Email Address 1: sales@domain.com
• Business Email Address 2: support@domain.com

Get Your Domain with Google Workspace

By subscribing to Google Workspace, you may register a domain name from another domain provider or purchase one from Google.

Why Google?

Among all the server providers, why should you choose Google? Now, let us introduce you to the advantages of engaging with Google.

➤Custom Email Address

While personal Gmail accounts use the “@gmail.com” domain, with the paid version of Google Workspace, you can create and use your custom domain for email addresses. If you own more than one company, each subsidiary can have a different domain, and you can create email addresses for each domain. When sending emails, you can switch between domains. Each account can have up to 600 domains configured.

➤High Security

Gmail has grown with its powerful spam filtering mechanism that can block over 99.9% of junk mail, phishing attempts, and malicious attacks, making it ideal for business email usage. Gmail will mark those emails with lower trust levels and move them to the spam folder, but you can customize warnings and threat detection for incoming emails.

➤More Features

Google Workspace not only acts as a mail server, but it also offers more features than email.

Refer to this article for Introduction of Gmail: Benefits, Features and Pricing.

The Features of Google Workspace

Here are some features that can help your business:

➤Google Drive – Easy Online Storage for Saving and Sharing Files With Your Team

Google Drive is a high-capacity cloud-based file storage where data is stored online. It could be accessed by multiple users at the same time. Users can set the permission levels for the different users that restrict them, such as viewers, commenters, and editors.

➤Google Calendar – Shared Calendars Make Scheduling Meetings Easier With The Team

Google Calendar is an app that helps teams manage their schedules. It will be easy to check when people are available and schedule meetings at the right time by checking their calendars. If team members have accounts under the same domain, their calendars will be shareable with each other. You can also set reminders for calendar events and receive email notifications for your to-do lists.

➤Google Docs, Sheets, Slides – Work Together in Real Time on Documents

Google Docs is for documents, Google Sheets is for spreadsheets, and Google Slides is for creating presentations. These tools allow multiple people to edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations simultaneously. All the changes will saved automatically. You can also assign tasks by tagging specific people and leaving comments on certain parts of the Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The people you tag will get notified directly through email.

➤Google Meet – Have Secure Video Meetings Anytime, Anywhere and With Anyone

Google Meet is an indispensable video conferencing tool for remote work. It does not require software installation on computers or manual updates, as Google automatically updates it periodically to maintain the latest version. Additionally, Google Meet maintains security by generating unique encryption keys, allowing you to conduct online meetings confidently.

➤Google Chat – Instant Messaging Keeps Your Team Connected and Conversations Organized

Google Chat is a messaging app that allows you to communicate one-on-one or in groups. You can create dedicated rooms (called Spaces) for each project to keep conversations organized. These Spaces will allow you to track the project’s progress, ask questions, and more. Each Space can have up to 8,000 people, which is convenient for large projects. You can start a video meeting directly from Google Chat by inviting others to a Google Meet call without sharing the meeting link and this simplifies the steps jump into real-time meetings.

➤Google Forms – Creating Surveys and Collecting Responses in a Short Time

Google Forms is a survey tool. Simply enter questions in text boxes and then select the response format for each question (e.g., descriptive, checkboxes, radio buttons) to instantly create a survey form. Survey results are compiled into a Google Sheet, enhancing efficiency in statistical analysis. As sharing settings can be edited, it can also be used as an external inquiry form in various scenarios.

➤Google Sites – Build Professional Websites Without IT Experts

Google Sites is a tool for building websites. You can easily create websites using Google Sites, even if you don’t have professional knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other coding languages. Google Sites provides many design templates for you to choose from. The websites you create can have an option to share it with the public or shared among users within your organization. You can use the Google Sites as an internal website or intranet portal exclusively accessible to members within your organization.

➤Google Keep – Memo App on Your Computer or Mobile Device That Sync Across Your Devices

Google Keep is an app that allows you to take notes on/offline. Instead of only note-taking, it has features like reminders and labels that make it suitable for task management and organization beyond just writing notes. Furthermore, it offers a speech-to-text conversion capability, enabling you to record audio and turn it into text notes automatically.

➤Admin Console – Centralized Management Gives You Complete Control Over Security Settings

The Google Admin Console is a tool for administrators to manage all users of Google Workspace. You can manage user accounts, create groups, monitor and retain logs, set security features, and manage applications.

The management console can also be accessed and managed on a web browser without installing additional applications. Since the Admin Console also allows management of mobile devices, if your company provides employees with company phones or tablets, you can use the mobile management features to view mobile reports like app management and access logs.

Explore Google Workspace as a Potential Solution

If you are starting up a new business, want to refurnish your business image, or plan to digitalize your business, explore Google Workspace as your potential solution and let the TS Cloud team assist you for further understanding and guide you and your team to the right pathway.