I run a small Etsy shop plus a weekly newsletter. I've been using my personal Gmail for everything and it's getting embarrassing, like when a brand emails me and I reply from something like glitterbomb88@. I'm not incorporated or anything but I feel like a separate business email would make me look more legit. Do you all bother? And if so, where do you get one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
Branding
A separate business email makes a creator business feel more professional
A separate email is the first thing I did. Costs like $6/mo for Google Workspace or Zoho has a free tier if you're tiny. No, you don't need an LLC.
Honestly? I still use personal email for my candle business and nobody has ever said a word. But I also don't email brands. If you're reaching out to sponsors then yeah, probably worth it.
Mossy's right but I'd add: don't buy the domain from the same place you host the email. I did that and moving later was a pain. Also you can just do a forwarding setup first, like yourname@yourdomain forwarded to your Gmail, and only upgrade to a real inbox once you actually need to send as it.
Counterpoint: half the big creators I know still have gmail addresses and it's fine. The thing that makes you look professional is replying on time and not spelling your own brand wrong. Nobody's checking your MX records.
nobody's checking MX records but people DO noticxe when a vendor they're about to send $500 to emails from hotmale69@. It's not about being fancy, it's about not making them pause.
I did this last spring. Went with Zoho's free plan for a year, then moved to their $1/mo thing. The actual setup took maybe 30 minutes and most of that was fighting the DNS records. Now I have hello@ and invoices@ (alias) and honestly it does feezl nicer. Small thing but it changed how I write emails, somehow.
wait you can get an alias for invoices just from the same cheap plan? I've been putting off doing this because I thought each address cost more
Yeah on Zoho at least, aliases are free up to like 5 per user. It's been a while though so check current limits. I'm not a reseller lol
the real move is forwarding from a domain to your gmail and then just replying 'as' the domain. I did that for 8 months before paying for anything. Free, works, looks fine to the other side.
This is the way ^ but only if your Gmail forwarding setup doesn't send on behalf of gibbjerish. Test it with a friend first. I've seen 'on behalf of' headers embarrass people.
Not to derail but what actually made the biggest difference for me wasn't the email, it was having a signature with my shop name and a link. A gmail with a clean signature beat my fancy domain with no signature. Do both ideally but if money's tight start with the signature.
ok attic that's a good poitn and also slightly annoying because I spent $70 on a domain and had no signature for 4 months
fololwing this. what domain registrar would you all suggest for someone who is scared of DNS?
Namecheap if you're scared, their interface is friendlier than most. Cloudflare if you're not, it's cheaper but more 'figure it out' energy.
And if you're going to use Workspace eventually, check the promo pricing before committing. I got locked into a non-promo plan because I didn't read the fine print and it's like $7 now. Still wortth it but I was salty for a week.
genuinely have no idea what a DNS is and my candles still sold out for the holidays. not everything is an email problem. but others here clearly know more than me, so, grain of salt.