What is business email?

Why does a business need its own email domain?

A business needs its own email domain because the address is part of how customers judge it. An invoice from [email protected] looks like it came from a business; the same invoice from [email protected] looks like it might be a scam. It's also a question of ownership and control:

• Trust: customers, suppliers and banks take a company address more seriously.
• Ownership: the company owns the domain, so it controls every address on it. When someone leaves, their mailbox stays.
• Continuity: you can change provider without changing addresses, because the address follows the domain.
• Delivery: you can publish authentication records for your own domain, which free addresses can't, and mailbox providers increasingly expect them.
• Roles: shared addresses such as hello@, support@ and invoices@ can move between people as the team changes.

What do you need for business email?

You need three things: a domain, a provider that hosts mailboxes on it, and DNS records that connect the two.

Part	What it is	Typical cost
Domain	Your name on the internet, such as yourcompany.com, rented yearly from a registrar	A small yearly fee, depending on the ending (.com, .co, .ai)
Email host	The service that stores mail and runs the mailboxes	Usually charged per person a month
MX record	The DNS entry that tells the world which servers receive your mail	Free, set at your DNS host
SPF, DKIM, DMARC	DNS records that prove mail really comes from you	Free, set at your DNS host

The MX record decides where mail goes: the email standard tells sending servers to look up a domain's MX records to find where to deliver. In practice one provider receives all of a domain's mail, which is why a business moves provider all at once rather than one mailbox at a time.

How is business email different from a free Gmail or Outlook address?

The difference is who owns the address and what you can do with it. A free address belongs to the person who signed up, on a domain owned by Google or Microsoft; a business address belongs to the company, on its own domain.

	Free address (@gmail.com)	Business email (@yourcompany.com)
Who owns it	The person who signed up	The company
Looks like	A personal account	A company
Add or remove people	Each makes their own account	An admin adds and removes them
When someone leaves	Their mail goes with them	Mailbox stays; an admin can reassign it
Shared addresses	Shared passwords	Shared mailboxes or groups, with separate logins
Authentication	Google's own records	Your own SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Cost	Free	A few dollars per person a month

How much does business email cost?

Business email costs a few dollars per person a month from the big suites, plus the domain. These are the entry plans that include custom business email, from each company's pricing page, checked on 7 November 2026:

Provider	Entry plan with business email	What else is in it
Google Workspace	Business Starter, $7 per user per month with a one-year commitment, billed monthly	Gmail on your domain, 30 GB pooled storage per user, Meet, Gemini
Microsoft 365	Business Basic, $7 per user a month paid yearly ($8.40 monthly)	Outlook on your domain, 1 TB storage per user, Teams, web Office apps

Both bundle email with documents, storage and video calls. If you already pay for those elsewhere, you're paying for them twice; if you don't, the bundle is good value.

What should business email include?

Beyond sending and receiving, a business email setup should cover how a team works, not just one person. Check for:

1. A mailbox per person, on your domain, with their own login.
2. Shared addresses for roles, answered by several people without sharing a password.
3. Aliases, so sales@ and orders@ can land in the right place without extra mailboxes.
4. SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up, so your mail is trusted; Google requires SPF or DKIM from everyone sending to Gmail.
5. An admin who can add people, remove them and recover a leaver's mail.
6. Apps for phone and computer, or standard IMAP and SMTP access for the apps you like.
7. Search, spam filtering and a way to move old mail in.

How does Mojobase handle business email?

Mojobase hosts business email on your own domain, with hosted mailboxes included in the per-person price: an address for each person and shared addresses such as support@ and hello@ for the team. Or keep the Gmail and Outlook mailboxes you already have and connect them; hosted and connected addresses sit side by side in one inbox in Mojobase Email.

Either way, new mail is sorted as it lands and replies are drafted with the rest of the business in view: the invoice, the last call, the open task. Switch support@ to Support and its mail goes to the shared Inbox in Customers. For hosted domains, Mojobase's domain page lists the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records to add and checks them for you. More on business email on your own domain.