How to Get a Free Custom Email in 2024

When it comes to businesses, first impressions go a long way. I’m sure you can relate to meeting someone new and judging them on their firm handshake or crisp suit. Well, online businesses aren’t really too different. When consumers see your email address, they pass judgement and assess how much they think they can trust your brand.

Put it this way, would you have more confidence in a brand that had an email address like contact@yourwebsitename.com or yourname@gmail.com – probably the latter! In fact, 75% of consumers believe having a custom email address that relates to your website is a defining factor when it comes to brand confidence.

Custom email domains take your website’s URL and uses it as part of the email address. If we look at my own website as an example, my email address is hello@ukwebhostreview.com which gives a professional brand image. It may seem like a small detail, but I can assure you it makes a big difference.

If you’re wondering how to get a free custom domain email I’ll show you how below.

Best Free Domain with Email Hosting

Regardless of the type of business you run, customers expect you to have a custom domain. It doesn’t matter if your business is solely online or you operate a craft stand in a market hall. A website and custom email domain are essential tools to running your own business. Simply put, if your email address uses your domain name, it’s going to look professional. Nobody wants to see a Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo email address.

Custom domain emails show that you mean business (and you’re serious about it). If customers don’t believe or trust in your brand, they’re never going to buy from you. According to a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, for millennials, brand authenticity is second only to loyalty discounts in importance when choosing companies to support.

Buying a domain name doesn’t have to be expensive. On average, they cost anywhere between 99p to £9.99 per year. If you’re not ready to fork out any money on a domain name, you can actually get a domain for free in just a few minutes. However, I’d highly recommend getting a domain with your hosting provider. Why? Because most of them offer a domain name for free as part of their hosting packages. Either way, you’ll need web hosting, so you might as well get one for free!

My personal recommendation is BlueHost. They offer the best of both worlds in terms of email hosting and free domains. They hold a solid reputation in the web hosting world and boast stable performance results for WordPress websites. Not only that, they give their customers unlimited email accounts and forwarding accounts. You’ll get to choose between three webmail solutions (or you can use your own) as well as POP3 and IMAP for security.

Visit BlueHost.com (£2.43/Month)

Find a Domain Name

Before securing your custom email domain, you’re going to need to find a domain name (if you haven’t already). As we’ve already discussed, your domain name is one of the most important steps to getting your free custom email domain. It’s going to represent your online presence and determine how people see your brand.

Choosing the best domain name can be difficult, as often they’re already taken. However, there are a few tips and tricks that I have up my sleeve that I’d like to share with you. If you’re finding it tough coming up with a domain name, you can use a tool that will generate a unique domain name that might help to get your creative juices flowing.

Let’s take a look at some tips for coming up with a domain name:

• TLD .com: Customers tend to trust .com domains because they’re familiar with them. If you’re able to get a .com TLD then it’s worth nabbing it whilst you can.
• Keywords: When coming up with a domain name it’s worth trying to include some keywords. Not only does this make your site more memorable to people, it can also make a difference to your Google search ranking.
• Prefix or Suffix: It’s quite common for your chosen domain name to be unavailable. You could try adding a prefix or suffix to your business name, for example cakestore.com could become thecakestore.com and still be recognisable by your customers.

Register Your Domain

Once you’ve chosen your domain name and have confirmed it’s available, you’ll need to register it. If you’re purchasing or obtaining your domain name through your web host, like BlueHost, there are a few features you can add. One of those features that I recommend is called domain privacy.

When you register a domain name, your name and address become public access. Someone can perform a lookup on your domain and it will tell them where it’s been registered and display your details. If you don’t want this to be accessible, you can opt for domain privacy. This masks your own information and uses your web host or domain registrar as the contact.

Setup an Email Account

As I mentioned earlier, if you get web hosting with BlueHost, you’ll get a free domain email. When you log into BlueHost’s dashboard, you’ll see the email section on the left. All you’ll need to do is enter your desired email and password and your email account is created. It’s really as simple as that.

Your email name represents what’s seen before the @ symbol, for example, hello@ukwebhostreview.com. If you’ve signed up to BlueHost’s basic plan, you’ll get up to 5 email accounts. People create multiple accounts for several reasons such as, a mailbox for general contact, sales, support, etc.

Visit BlueHost.com (£2.43/Month)

Best Cheap Hosting with Free Custom Email Domain

Starting a new business can get expensive pretty quickly. It’s hard to get a good balance of decent quality and affordable prices. However, if you’re on a budget, you don’t have to settle for poor products just because they’re cheap. When it comes to email services, you are going to need something stable and secure so it’s not worth sacrificing.

As I’ve already mentioned, many web hosts offer free custom email domains with their packages. This saves both time and money with the ability to combine three features under one roof. If you choose to go down the web hosting route, make sure you check out the best web hosting providers so you don’t compromise on quality.

There’s a few things to consider when you’re looking for the best budget hosting with a free custom email domain. It’s not all about the cost, so let’s take a look at what you’ll need:

• Spam filters
• Number of email accounts (this will depend entirely on your own business’ needs)
• Storage space
• Forwarding accounts
• POP and IMAP support

Web hosts tend to offer their own webmail access so you can check your emails. However, many of them are now compatible with third-party email services like Office, G Suite, etc. If you’re more familiar with one of these programs, definitely check with your web host that you can use them.

Companies like iPage offer excellent support, so you can check with them before proceeding. iPage is extremely affordable starting at only £1.50 per month. You’ll get unlimited storage, bandwidth and a free domain name. iPage essentials email account offer 500MB storage per account, webmail access, POP3/IMAP, autoresponder, spam filter and virus protection.

Want more information? Read our case study on the best email hosting services.