Electronic mail (e-mail) has the most popular and convenient form of communication. So when it comes to creating an email account that is specially dedicated or used for your small or medium business there are two options. These two options are based mainly on the number of users. If you are individual doing freelance work selling your professional skills or small home business, you may need one email address. If you have several employees than consider using one of the paid cloud based email services. Both options are discussed here.
Single use business email account
Creating a single business email account is quite easy and free. The two most popular free email services providers online are Outlook from Microsoft and Gmail from Google. Google and Microsoft are industry leaders in internet search engines and web or internet related cloud services. As such, Gmail and Outlook are used by so many people and businesses. They have both Free Service (For individual accounts) and paid subscription based cloud services as well.
So, to create a free email account on either Gmail or Outlook, you need to have the following before signing up.
- Valid mobile phone number-This is be required to confirm your location, number, and send you the activation or confirmation code.
- Valid working email. This could be your personal email account with Gmail, Outlook, your work email or any other email account. This acts as a recovery email account. In the event you forgot your password, change your location to another country, login in form another device and etc, Outlook or Gmail technical support services can reach you.
- Email address you want to create. Since, this email is for your business, it must be reflective of the business. For example, if your business name is Kanage Fresh Bakery then saleskfb@gmail.com would be an appropriate kanagefreshbakery@gmail.com. If you use the full business name (as some people do) and name is long, it can hard for potential clients to remember or they can make some typo errors while typing. So always have short email address but reflective of your business. Initials are great email addresses as well example kfb@gmail.com. Avoid using combination of numbers and letters. Example kfb090@gmail.com. This kind of emails are often associated with junk mails and your email may end up in the junk folder of the recipient’s email account.
Once you have these three, you can go to either www.outlook.live.com/ or www.gmail.com and click Create Account button to start creating your business email account.
The trick is to enter the business name in the First Name and Last Name. For example, for the example business name Kanage Fresh Bakery, First Name will be Kanage Fresh, Last Name will be Bakery. Split your business name between the First Name box and Last Name box.
In the User Name box, type in the email address name. The email address should be without the @gmail.com or @outlook.com part. Just the name. Then @gmail.com or @outlook.com part will be added automatically.
Enter and confirm the password. Make sure you write the password down somewhere so you can remember it or reference it later.
Then follow the rest of the prompts to complete the process.
Email account for business with more employees
If your business has more than one employee and each employee need to use an individual email account, then consider using paid cloud based email services. Three (3) popular email hosting services are listed below. You can do google search for email hosting services and make some comparisons with others as well. For payment purposes, they will require signing up with VISA card details so that once the payment is due as per the signed up subscription plan, payment will be automatically deducted. Automatic VISA Card deduction payment is the standard payment method used by most cloud based email service providers.
Google Workspace ($6.00/user per month)
Proton Mail (7 Euros per user per month)
Zoho Mail ($1-4 per user month) depending on the subscription plan type.
For paid cloud hosted email services like these, the first user account is regarded as Administrator or super User Account. This means, it will have access to the Administration c-panel dashboard of the business account and add/delete users and register VISA card details for payment and etc. Super User account can also assign certain administrative user roles to other users as well.
Logging into your business email accounts
Logging into your business email account is easy if you use paid cloud based email hosting services as mentioned above. Just go to their website and click on the Login. Also, note that when you login using another device (laptop, computer, smartphone) other than the one you use to sign up and create account, they might ask you to provide your Mobile Phone number or recovery (alternative email address) so they can verify by sending you a confirmation code. This is for security purposes to protect your account from unauthorized login access.
If you using free Gmail for then you can add the business email account to your Gmail Login area so that you can alternatively use or login to your personal Gmail Account.
- Login in your personal Gmail Account and click on the Google Accounts icon on the top-right corner of your Gmail window. See image below
- Click Add New Account and that should lead you to new sign in window. There you can sign in using your business Gmail business address.
- Once you have login in successfully, the business email address will be added under the Google Accounts icon. To switch between your personal Gmail and Business email accounts, click the Google Accounts icon and click on the email address only.
Note: This may not be possible on some smart phone using Gmail Application for Mobile devices. Instead of using the GMAIL App, try using web version by using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browser app and go straight to www.gmail.com and use the web version to add account.