Do you need a website to have a business email?

What you actually need

A domain name, such as yourbusiness.com, registered in your own name. That's the only requirement. Email and websites are separate services that both use the domain.

An email provider to host the mailbox. The two most common for small businesses are Google Workspace (Gmail with your domain) and Microsoft 365 (Outlook with your domain).

What it costs

The domain is roughly $10–$25 a year. At the time of writing, Google Workspace Business Starter is about $7 per user per month on an annual plan, and Microsoft 365 Business Basic is also about $7 per user per month after its 2026 price increase. Zoho Mail offers a limited free plan for very small teams.

If you only need to receive mail, many domain registrars, and Cloudflare, offer free email forwarding: mail to you@yourbusiness.com arrives in your existing Gmail. Sending from that address reliably usually needs a proper mailbox.

Choosing your email address

Use your name for your own mailbox, like jake@yourbusiness.com. People reply to people.

Add a shared address for enquiries, like hello@ or office@, so work doesn't disappear if someone leaves. Most providers let you add these as free aliases that land in an existing mailbox, rather than paying for another user.

Avoid hyphens and numbers in the domain if you can. You will say this address out loud on the phone a thousand times; make it easy to spell.

Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

Both give you a reliable, professional mailbox on your own domain, and at the time of writing both start at about $7 per user per month on an annual plan.

Choose Google Workspace if you already use Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive, or you mostly work from a phone. The apps are simple and the Gmail interface is familiar. Choose Microsoft 365 if you live in Outlook, Word and Excel, or your accountant and suppliers send you Office files all day.

Either way, you can use the provider's phone app or your phone's built-in mail app. What matters far more than the brand is setting up SPF, DKIM and DMARC properly, which is the next section.

How to set it up

Register the domain. Sign up with an email provider and tell it your domain. The provider gives you a few DNS records to add at your registrar; the main ones are MX records, which tell the internet where your mail should go. Once they're added, mail usually starts flowing within an hour.

A quick way to check: send a test email from your new address to a Gmail account you own, open it, and use "Show original". It should say PASS next to SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If any says FAIL or is missing, fix that record before sending anything to customers.

The step that keeps you out of spam

Most new business emails land in spam for one reason: the domain hasn't proved it's allowed to send. Three more DNS records fix that, and your provider will give you the values:

SPF lists the services allowed to send email for your domain. DKIM signs each message so receivers can verify it wasn't tampered with. DMARC tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks.

Set all three before you send anything important. Without them, quotes and invoices you send can quietly land in customers' spam folders.

Moving from a Gmail address without losing anything

You don't have to switch overnight. Set up the new mailbox, then set your old Gmail to forward to it, and add the new address to your signature, invoices and Google Business Profile.

Tell your regular customers and suppliers, update the address wherever you log in to things (bank, suppliers, software), and keep the old account open for a year so nothing important is missed. Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 can also import your old mail if you want your history in one place.

Should you get a website too?

You don't need one for email, but once you own the domain you've already done the hardest part. Customers who get an email from you@yourbusiness.com will often type yourbusiness.com to check you out, and finding nothing there costs trust.

You can see a finished site for your business in seconds with our free builder. If you like it, you can put it live on the same domain as your email.