No doubt on your travels you will have come across websites advertised on vehicles and flyers which appear very professional at first glance. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs in the early days undo much of their good work by using free email accounts such as Gmail. They may well have spent a small fortune building up a very useful, very attractive and memorable website but once you see Gmail, Yahoo as the email address, what does this say?

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Web hosting with email – keeping it professional

Your web hosting provider will be able to assist you with the use of cPanel whether you have shared web hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting or cloud services. Choosing the most appropriate package, from the array of web hosting packages available, is something which should be considered at the earliest opportunity.

Interested in VPS hosting with free cPanel email? Check out these amazing VPS Hosting packages here.

Your email address is a vital element of your professional image and there is no doubt it should be directly linked to your domain name. For example:-
joeblogs@mycompany.com
This is just an example but compare and contrast this to:
mycompany@gmail.com

You will no doubt have come across many people using Gmail.com and their company name as their email name. There are a number of issues to take into consideration here:-

Using a general email account such as Gmail can make your company look cheap
Using mycompany as your email name suggests that you do not have access to company website emails – might this prompt customers to think of a potential scam in the offing?
This type of Gmail account gives you no idea who you are speaking to or indeed which department they are in

If you look at the email connected to the company domain name (web hosting and domain names often go together) you have the option of creating employee or company department email accounts. Immediately you know who you are contacting or the relevant department. It is also worth remembering that you can set up numerous email accounts on your cPanel which all have the extension of your company name.

Image, image, image – if this is the first thing a potential customer sees about your company, and it looks cheap, this is surely not the first impression you would hope for?

How do I setup an email account?

The task of setting up an email account via your hosting.co.uk account is extremely simple and quick. We will now take you through the step-by-step process:-

Login to your web hosting account by navigating to the client area
You will then see the client dashboard
Click on the services option
Select the relevant account (some customers may have more than one domain hosting account)
This will take you to the web hosting dashboard
In the quick shortcuts section you will see an email account icon, click on this
You will then be taken to the cPanel email account access page
Notice that all existing email accounts for the domain are listed
Select the blue button entitled “Create”
This allows you to create an email address with the extension @mycompany.com (for example)
We recommend that you set up common email addresses such as contact or support
Add your chosen email username to the username box
Use the generated password option to create a strong random password (ensure that you save a copy of the password) or type in your own password
Next select the amount of storage required for each individual email account
Finally click on “Create”

Your first email account has now been created. You will be taken back to the email section of the cPanel where you will see a list of all email addresses connected to that domain name. As a quick confirmation, check to see that the email address you have added is on the list. Many people automatically assume it is fairly complicated when setting up a new email address, but it is literally as simple as the process described above.

Full list of cPanel services

The hosting.co.uk service is set up so that all shared hosting accounts have cPanel as standard – part of the package. When looking at vps, dedicated and cloud hosting services the cPanel option will need to be purchased separately. We strongly advise that you familiarise yourself with all of the cPanel services available as detailed in our article, what should I know about cPanel.

If you have limited experience using the cPanel dashboard you should proceed with caution when looking at the various services and options available. Speak with your web hosting company if you have any issues and they will be able to point you in the right direction.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Over the last couple of years we have seen some significant changes with regards to online communication and data storage. GDPR was introduced by the European Union on 25 May 2018 and dictates how businesses are able to contact and store customer information. We have created a very interesting blog post which covers email opt-in regulations. Find the article here.

It is imperative that you abide by the regulations as we have seen some extremely large fines in recent months. Remember, the loss of reputation (and negative PR) could dwarf any fine that the regulators hand out to those breaking GDPR regulations. Do not assume it will never happen to you, it might!

User-friendly email services

While there is no doubt that cPanel is a very useful dashboard, and has an array of services, the email section is not always the easiest to use. As a consequence, for those with a little more experience (or more commonly for corporate emails) there is the option to manage your emails/email accounts through third-party services such as Gmail. So, how does this work?

Rather than using a Gmail.com email address this service allows you add your own email account. For example, rather than logging in as joeblogs@gmail.com , using the example above, you would log into your Gmail account as joeblogs@mycompany.com. In effect this would be the dashboard for your cPanel email page but a lot more user-friendly and more efficient. All emails sent via your domain name Gmail account will show your company email address rather than Gmail.com. So, you get the full benefits. Not to mention, the ease of access associated with Gmail accounts, while still maintaining your domain name identity. A win-win!

If you wish to go down this route, and have limited experience, it is advisable to speak with your web hosting company. They will be able to provide you with the relevant information to allow you to sync your email accounts with an array of different services and devices. This can be priceless for those on the move looking to maintain 24/7 access to their email accounts.

Summary

As stated above it is very simple to setup an email account with cPanel for your domain name. This first step is very fast. It can become a little more complicated when you are looking to sync your email accounts with various devices. Perhaps you can look to integrate your emails into a third-party services such as Gmail.com. If you have limited experience it is strongly advisable to speak with your web hosting company. They should be able to provide you with the relevant information you need to sync your emails.

On the subject of corporate email addresses, remember that image and reputation are an accumulation of various different factors. You might have the best website, and the best products. However, if you are not using an email account directly linked to your domain name, this could look unprofessional. If you give a potential customer a reason to look elsewhere they may just do so!