An address at your own domain — [email protected] — costs either nothing or about the price of a sandwich a month, depending on which version you want.

First: does it matter?

Somewhat, honestly. [email protected] is perfectly usable and nobody has ever refused a quote because of it. But when a homeowner is comparing three quotes, the one from a business address reads slightly more established, and that's the entire benefit.

If you don't own a domain yet, you need one first — how to buy a domain name. That's $10–$20 a year and it's also your website's address, so it's rarely wasted.

Option 1: forwarding (free)

Mail sent to [email protected] arrives in your existing Gmail. You keep using Gmail; the world sees a business address.

Most registrars and many DNS providers offer this free. Setup is a couple of records (MX and a verification record) or a checkbox in the control panel, and it takes about ten minutes.

The limitation: you can receive as the business, but replies come from your Gmail address unless you configure "send as." Gmail can do that too — add the address under Settings → Accounts → Send mail as, and it will send through your provider's SMTP server. Some free forwarding services don't offer SMTP, in which case replies go out from Gmail.

For most one-person businesses, forwarding plus a "Send as" is enough, and it's free.

Option 2: a real mailbox ($6–$8/month)

Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho Mail and similar. You get a proper mailbox at your domain, with calendar, contacts, spam filtering and mobile apps. Zoho has a cheap tier; Google and Microsoft are around $6–$7 per user per month on their basic plans.

This is the right choice if you use email seriously — quotes, invoices, customer records — or if you need more than one address (dave@ and office@).

Setup: buy the plan, verify the domain with a DNS record, create the mailbox. Twenty minutes, mostly waiting for DNS.

Option 3: neither — use a free mailbox and say so

Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo. Free, reliable, familiar. Nothing wrong with it. If you're not sure you'll keep the domain, don't pay for mailboxes on it yet.

Comparison

	Forwarding	Real mailbox	Free Gmail
Cost	$0	$6–$8/mo	$0
Address at your domain	Receiving	Yes, both ways	No
Storage	Whatever inbox you forward to	Usually 15–30 GB	15 GB
Setup time	10 min	20 min	5 min
Looks like a business	Yes	Yes	Not really

The trap: don't make it your only address

Whatever you set up, make sure the email address you use to log into your domain registrar, your website host and your Google account is not the one at your domain.

If [email protected] is the contact address on the domain registration, and the domain expires, the expiry warnings bounce. You then can't receive the mail telling you how to fix the thing that broke the mail. Keep a personal address — the one you've had for a decade — as the recovery address everywhere.

What people get wrong

• Buying an expensive email suite for one person. $25 a month for a solo plumber is not necessary.
• Paying for a mailbox before the domain is in their own name. See do I own my domain.
• Using a made-up business name in the address that doesn't match what customers call them.
• Never checking it. A business address that goes unanswered for a week is worse than a Gmail you check.

The short version

Own a domain, forward mail to the inbox you already check, add "send as" in Gmail. Total cost: the domain. Upgrade to a real mailbox when email becomes part of how you run the business, not before.