Registering domain, e-mail address and other woes

Soldato
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Hey

Firstly, my bad if this is not the right subforum, I scrolled through 4 times and this is the best I could find, yet I feel it doesn't fit..

I cannot apologise enough for the following post. Its pretty much an unfiltered dump directly from my brain and would probably be better split over a few posts, but here we are.

I'm about to launch what I guess could be called a "hobby business". The product is in my hand, and the packaging is 90% done.

Total investment is very low. In my mind, if I can make a few quid a week I'll call it a success, along with the knowledge I have gained for any future projects.

I'll be doing the ebay / amazon thing initially, and honestly, this product is suited to that so will probably go no further (though I already have product range 2 in my head)

The problem...

I'm about to sign up for an email, and *[email protected] is taken, and any kind of variation such as my.brand@gmail or anything that doesn't look stupid is taken. I could get [email protected], but I feel like I've never seen a business use @live where I've seen a few @gmails. I guess, honestly, its only really the PayPal address and no one will care?

However... mybrand.com is available, and even if I have no plans to use it soon, I guess I would be a fool not to secure that right?

The question...

Should I take [email protected] or [email protected] and just secure the mybrand.com domain at lowest cost, or...

...Should I just take the mybrand.com and have a [email protected]? As I said, this has been a low cost endeavor thus far, so blowing money per month on a vanity e-mail address doesn't seam like the way to go to me...

Does anyone have a recommendation for the cheapest way to sit on a domain and not use it, or the cheapest way to register a domain and make use of it via e-mail?

In case its not clear, I know literally nothing about domain names or how e-mail works.
Any advise would be very, very much appreciated...

Thanks
 
Soldato
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If it's a business having a domain isn't a 'vanity'.

Exchange email on an O365 Business subscription is a few £s per month. If the business can't stand that then it isn't viable in the first place.
 
Soldato
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It can be a little daunting starting from scratch, registering a domain is quite cheap and easy, literally a few quid a month and for that some providers include email hosting or make it easy to point it at an external (free) service. In terms of how professional a domain looks, a lot depends on the type of products being sold. Am I really going to care if the person selling me a £1 USB lead uses a live.com email address? Probably not. If you're trying to sell me a £1,000 product, I probably feel different and have a different level of expectation.
 
Soldato
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If it's a business having a domain isn't a 'vanity'.

Exchange email on an O365 Business subscription is a few £s per month. If the business can't stand that then it isn't viable in the first place.

This.

I get irrationally judgy when I see a company using a 'vanity' name for their website but then use [email protected] as their email address. It costs a pittance to have email hosting setup.
 
Soldato
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I'm about to sign up for an email, and *[email protected] is taken, and any kind of variation such as my.brand@gmail or anything that doesn't look stupid is taken.

That's because as far as Gmail is concerned [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and so on are the same thing. It ignores the dots in the username part.

I wish there were an option to configure that. I have [email protected] but get loads of emails for [email protected] which someone in Florida thinks is their email address. I've had divorce paperwork, medical bills and all sorts. I'd like to be able to say that only emails sent to firstname.lastname should be delivered, all other variants should be bounced.
 
Associate
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Just secure mybrand.com probably around £20 for a year by registering at somewhere like 123reg, and then get hosting somewhere I use Nethosted. Then redirect the parked domain at 123reg to the hosting company by changing nameservers in control panel. Then set up various emails such as sales/accounts mybrand.com etc then use something like Thunderbird as the email client job done. Cost around £100 max for year dependent on space required for website ect simples.
 
Permabanned
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A business probably should have their own domain to be fair. Not using some premade free email address but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.

Do you have any plans for a website at all or is just literally just an email address?
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
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Weston-super-Mare
Thanks for your replies.

It would appear it can all be done cheaper than I had thought. I did some research a few months back, and I think I was misremembering the yearly costs as monthly lol.

I'll almost certainly be using @mybrand.com

As for plans for a website. I have no plans to use it any time soon, if at all. Maybe a landing page at most. It will feel great to have the .com in the bag just incase things go in a different direction though.

On to the research!
 
Soldato
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I wouldn't go with .com and look at .co.uk or .uk if your still based in the UK, will be cheaper and make no difference to your clients.

20i would be a place to look at as they will give you free hosting with a domain name so you could setup a holding page for the time being.
 
Soldato
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If you like using gmail then I'd register my domain with Google https://domains.google/ (£10/year for a .co.uk) and then subscribe to Google Workspace Business Starter https://workspace.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/pricing.html?ga_lang=en (£4.14/mo)

The 'hardest' part, if not tech savvy, is linking your domain name to your email provider by editing MX records and such like. While I have no proof, I figure both being handled by Google will make it easier and if not you have to think support will be easy to obtain and they'll know what they are doing. For <£5/mo equivalent across the two you have proper email, cloud storage, video calling, the google 'sites' hosting for your website and an office productivity solution suitable for a small business.
 
Soldato
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The South
Exchange email on an O365 Business subscription is a few £s per month. If the business can't stand that then it isn't viable in the first place.

Yup, for the cost of around £5/6 a month, i'd opt for a domain and email hosting, either Google or Microsoft Office 365.

And personally i'd opt for a Office 365(O365) 'Microsoft 365 Business Basic' license (50GB mailbox) for email at £3.80 + VAT per user per month (if paid annually) and then grab your domain from which ever provider you're wanting to use - just an example, Namecheap is around £5 per year for a .co.uk; £6 for a .com.

Setting up your domain for O365 isn't as hard as it looks and O365 offers a bit of a wizard that lists exactly what DNS records you need to enter into your domain providers portal/control panel.

From here you can either set it up as [email protected] as your primary mailbox; or, set up the primary mailbox as (your name)@mybrand.com and then use Distribution Groups/Aliases/Shared Mailboxes (no additional cost) for all of your "working" email addresses, ie - payments@, sales@, returns@, complaints@ etc.

Sounds daunting but again, the above isn't particularly difficult to setup and there's a load of information and YouTube videos if you get stuck and/or plenty of us here that regularly deal with O365 that can offer help etc.
 
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