What is custom email address?
A custom email address is simply the address of your professional/business email account used specifically for business communications.
Example is info@businessname.com as against what some business owners do by using gmail or yahoo mail account like businessname@gmail.com.

Is there any danger using gmail or yahoo for your business?
The danger is in the impression you are creating in the mind of your potential customers.
Having email address like businessname@gmail.com or even personal email address like yourname@gmail.com waters down your branding effort and makes you sound unprofessional.

What custom email means to your customers, clients, and/or acquaintances is that you have created a real business. They can now relate with you as a business and respect your pricing and payment terms for products you market. Not only that, custom email promotes your brand equity. The perceived value people have for what you do or sell is increased. You are taken as a business man in business. If what you use on the otherhand is your personal email address, your potential client is not sure you are into the business full time or if you intend to continue in the business for long.

Does your existing personal email account service provider like Gmail have business email?
Yes. There is Google Business Mail known as G suite used for hosting custom email account for businesses. There are other business email service providers like Office 365, Zoho workplace, Rackspace email, Fastmail, and Kerio cloud amongst others.

How much does a typical Business Account Cost?
Custom Email hosting is normally charged per user, per month and can be billed annually. The least affordable option is Rackspace Email at $2 per month, per user. This means if you have few people working with you for instance and you have departments relating with the public like enquiries team, e-payments team, and customer support team etc, you will propably want to have addresses like:
1. info@companyname.com
2. enquiries@companyname.com
3. epayment@companyname.com
4. support@companyname.com and
5. yourpersonalname@companyname.com
you have 5 users multiplied by $2 = $10 per month. Billed annually is $10 x 12 months = $120. In Naira terms is N43,200 per annum.

However, a basic Gmail business account (G suite) with more features and better functionality is $5 per month, per user. If you can commit to 12 months, the cost drops to $50 (N18,000) per user, per year. Multiplied by 5 users for the above example is $250 (N90,000). G Suite used to be free for accounts with 10 users or less, but Google stopped offering that option in late 2012. Other pricing from other Email host are shown in the attached image below.

But the question is can a typical small business in Nigeria afford this? If not, how then can we maintain a professional branding using a custom email address?
The first option is opting for Email forwarding.

What is Email Forwarding?
This is when you create a fictitious business email address and redirect incoming mails to your existing personal email account. e.g. forwarding a fictitious info@companyname.com to yourname@yahoo.com
The downside is you will not be able to send out or reply incoming emails with this fictitious custom email address. Hence, it is a one-way traffic unless you go a step further.

What is the step further?
The step further is to use your fictitious business email address with existing personal email host like Yahoo for free. This automatically turns your fictitious business email address to a real one as you will now be able to reply incoming emails and send-out new emails using this business email from your existing Yahoo account.

How do I go about all these?
Learning how to go about this step by step to create, forward, integrate and set-up your custom business email for free is a post for another day but to be sure this is needful or needed skill, kindly reply this post with your comments. Let's be sure someone is following and my time typing is not a waste of time.

In closing
Aside Email forwarding, there are other free options for setting-up a custom business email using an email hosting app for free with full features! All these are what I have in the pipeline as my contribution to moving your business brand forward.

Edusearch:
What is custom email address?
A custom email address is simply the address of your professional/business email account used specifically for business communications.
Example is info@businessname.com as against what some business owners do by using gmail or yahoo mail account like businessname@gmail.com.

Is there any danger using gmail or yahoo for your business?
The danger is in the impression you are creating in the mind of your potential customers.
Having email address like businessname@gmail.com or even personal email address like yourname@gmail.com waters down your branding effort and makes you sound unprofessional.

What custom email means to your customers, clients, and/or acquaintances is that you have created a real business. They can now relate with you as a business and respect your pricing and payment terms for products you market. Not only that, custom email promotes your brand equity. The perceived value people have for what you do or sell is increased. You are taken as a business man in business. If what you use on the otherhand is your personal email address, your potential client is not sure you are into the business full time or if you intend to continue in the business for long.

Does your existing personal email account service provider like Gmail have business email?
Yes. There is Google Business Mail known as G suite used for hosting custom email account for businesses. There are other business email service providers like Office 365, Zoho workplace, Rackspace email, Fastmail, and Kerio cloud amongst others.

How much does a typical Business Account Cost?
Custom Email hosting is normally charged per user, per month and can be billed annually. The least affordable option is Rackspace Email at $2 per month, per user. This means if you have few people working with you for instance and you have departments relating with the public like enquiries team, e-payments team, and customer support team etc, you will propably want to have addresses like:
1. info@companyname.com
2. enquiries@companyname.com
3. epayment@companyname.com
4. support@companyname.com and
5. yourpersonalname@companyname.com
you have 5 users multiplied by $2 = $10 per month. Billed annually is $10 x 12 months = $120. In Naira terms is N43,200 per annum.

However, a basic Gmail business account (G suite) with more features and better functionality is $5 per month, per user. If you can commit to 12 months, the cost drops to $50 (N18,000) per user, per year. Multiplied by 5 users for the above example is $250 (N90,000). G Suite used to be free for accounts with 10 users or less, but Google stopped offering that option in late 2012. Other pricing from other Email host are shown in the attached image below.

But the question is can a typical small business in Nigeria afford this? If not, how then can we maintain a professional branding using a custom email address?
The first option is opting for Email forwarding.

What is Email Forwarding?
This is when you create a fictitious business email address and redirect incoming mails to your existing personal email account. e.g. forwarding a fictitious info@companyname.com to yourname@yahoo.com
The downside is you will not be able to send out or reply incoming emails with this fictitious custom email address. Hence, it is a one-way traffic unless you go a step further.

What is the step further?
The step further is to use your fictitious business email address with existing personal email host like Yahoo for free. This automatically turns your fictitious business email address to a real one as you will now be able to reply incoming emails and send-out new emails using this business email from your existing Yahoo account.

How do I go about all these?
Learning how to go about this step by step to create, forward, integrate and set-up your custom business email for free is a post for another day but to be sure this is needful or needed skill, kindly reply this post with your comments. Let's be sure someone is following and my time typing is not a waste of time.

In closing
Aside Email forwarding, there are other free options for setting-up a custom business email using an email hosting app for free with full features! All these are what I have in the pipeline as my contribution to moving your business brand forward.

Now selling Office 365 Account – 5 Users @ 10