Why You Should NEVER Use Gmail for Your Business

When you start a business endeavor, you naturally make a list of items that you need: a logo design, a website, business cards, maybe a brochure or flyer, and of course, an email address. Typically, people head over to Google (or another free email service) and setup a Gmail account. However, with that one simple act, you just significantly undermined the credibility of your business before it has even started.

The problem with using a Gmail account for business purposes

Lack of Branding
Everything from, your logo, to your website, and your email address, establish your brand and reflect on your business. Something as simple as creating an email account, can determine whether your brand is viewed as professional or amateurish.

Let me use an analogy to illustrate the point. Say your favorite store is Macy’s department store. You sign up for their email newsletter so you can get notifications on sales and specials. You finally get that first email from Macy’s informing you of their next big sale. But, instead of the email sender address being something like newsletter@macys.com, the email address is macysnewsletter@gmail.com. Would you not question the legitimacy of the email and the professionalism of the company? Well, your business is scrutinized in the same manner when you opt for an email address that is not branded with your domain name. Using a third-party email service screams “unprofessional.” The reality is, with a Gmail account, you are promoting Google’s brand, not your own.

Being misidentified as spam
Using a business name with a third-party email (i.e. macys@gmail.com), is also a common practice used by hackers and scammers in phishing schemes. For this reason, some spam filters will block these kind of email addresses. This means that your email may not even reach its intended recipients. Starting off with a properly domain-branded email address gives your fledgling business the best opportunity to establish credibility from the beginning.

The proper way to establish your email account

Ideally, you should establish your domain name (www.yourbusiness.com) and hosting plan BEFORE setting up your email address. Most hosting plans have email addresses already included. Once your hosting plan is purchased and setup, you can create email accounts that are branded with your own domain name. This can be done even before your website has finished being developed. This way, you can begin communicating with vendors and potential customers and be seen as reputable. Hosted email accounts typically come with a webmail option. You can also setup the email account to be accessed on your computer, phone, and tablet.

If you prefer the simplicity of Gmail, they do offer paid email services that will allow you to use your own domain name. This is a great alternative that will allow you to take advantage of Gmail’s email infrastructure.

What if I already created a Gmail account for my business?

So, what do you do if you have already made this mistake? The first thing is, create an email account branded with your domain name as soon as possible. Next, you want to update the email address wherever you have used it (website, flyers, business cards, online accounts, etc.). While you are in transition, you can have emails from your Gmail account simultaneously forwarded to your domain-branded account. This way, you can respond to emails with your domain-branded account and allow people to adjust to the new email address. Then after a few weeks, you can start using the domain-branded email exclusively. It may also be worthwhile to send out a message notifying your subscribers/clients of the email change.

As stated above, If you are using Gmail, you could migrate your account to their paid services, G Suite, for an extra fee.

Conclusion

This post is not a bash free email services. They are great for establishing free email addresses for personal use. However, they should never be used for your business.

Having an email address with your domain name helps you appear professional and lets businesses and potential customers know that you are reputable. It will also potentially keep your messages from being marked as spam when you send emails to clients and vendors. Just taking the small step of creating an email account with your own domain name can go a long way towards establishing the credibility of your brand.