Plenty of good New Zealand businesses still run on a Gmail or Xtra address. It works, it is free, and changing it feels like a job for another week. But yourname@gmail.com on a quote is doing quiet damage every time you send one, and fixing it takes an afternoon.
Why it matters more than it seems
A customer comparing two quotes has very little to go on. Both businesses claim to be reliable. Both have a phone number. One writes from @yourbusiness.co.nz and the other from a free address, and the difference reads as the difference between a business and a bloke with a van — fairly or not.
There are practical reasons too:
- You control it. Staff leave. If their work email lives on a personal Gmail account they created, the correspondence, the client relationships and the history leave with them. Mailboxes on your own domain belong to the business.
- It scales. Adding accounts@, info@ or a mailbox for a new hire takes a minute.
- It markets itself. Every email you send puts your web address in front of the recipient.
- Deliverability. Sending business mail from a domain you control lets you set SPF, DKIM and DMARC properly, which is increasingly what keeps you out of spam folders.
What you need before you start
Just a domain name. If you already have a .co.nz or .nz domain pointed at your website, you can add email to it without touching the site.
Professional email or Microsoft 365?
This is the real decision, and it is genuinely about what your team does all day rather than about email itself.
| Professional email | Microsoft 365 | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Sole traders and small teams who need email that works | Teams that also need Word, Excel, Teams and shared files |
| Includes | Mailbox on your domain, webmail, phone and desktop access, calendar | All of that, plus the Office apps, OneDrive storage and Teams |
| Cost | Lower, per mailbox | Higher, per user |
| Storage | Enough for normal use | Considerably more, plus file storage |
The honest guidance: if your team already lives in Excel and shares documents constantly, Microsoft 365 pays for itself and you would end up buying Office separately anyway. If email is genuinely all you need, professional email is a fraction of the price and does the job properly. You can mix — the director on Microsoft 365, the field staff on standard mailboxes.
Mailboxes versus aliases
A distinction worth understanding, because it saves real money.
A mailbox is a real account with its own password and storage, and you pay per mailbox. An alias is a forwarding address with no storage of its own — mail to info@yourbusiness.co.nz simply lands in an existing mailbox. Aliases are usually free.
Most small businesses need fewer mailboxes than they think. One per person, plus aliases for info@, accounts@, sales@ and anything else on your website. Do not buy a mailbox for a role nobody sits in.
Setting it up, step by step
- Choose your plan and the number of mailboxes. Start with one per person; add aliases free.
- Verify the domain. The provider gives you a TXT record to add to your DNS, proving you control the name. If your domain and email are with the same provider this is usually automatic.
- Point the MX records. These tell the world where your mail lives. Changing them is the moment email actually switches over. Again, same provider means this is generally done for you.
- Add SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Do not skip these. Briefly: SPF lists who is allowed to send as you; DKIM signs your messages so they cannot be tampered with; DMARC tells receiving servers what to do if a message fails those checks. Between them they are what stops your mail landing in spam and stops someone spoofing your address to invoice your clients.
- Create the mailboxes and test. Send to and from each one, from outside your network.
- Set up devices. Phone, laptop, tablet. Most providers give you the settings; many configure automatically.
Moving your existing mail across
The bit people fear, and the bit that is genuinely straightforward if you sequence it correctly.
Do not delete the old account first. Set up the new mailboxes and get them working before you change your MX records. Most providers offer a migration tool that copies existing mail, contacts and calendars into the new mailbox. If yours does not, you can connect both accounts in a desktop mail client and drag the folders across — inelegant, but it works and nothing is lost.
Once mail is arriving at the new address, leave the old account open and forwarding for at least a month. There is always a supplier, a bank or an old client who is still writing to it.
Tell people, but do not make a production of it
Update your email signature, your website, your Google Business Profile, your invoice template and your social profiles. Then simply start sending from the new address. Most contacts will update their records automatically the first time you reply from it. A mass “we have changed our email” announcement is rarely necessary.
Common mistakes
- Changing MX records before the mailboxes exist. Mail bounces in the gap. Build first, switch second.
- Forgetting SPF and DKIM. Everything appears to work, then weeks later you discover your quotes have been going to junk.
- Buying a mailbox for every address. Aliases are free. Use them.
- Registering the domain in a staff member’s name. Same problem as a personal Gmail, just further down the track.
- Letting the domain lapse. Your email stops with your website. Automatic renewal, always.
If you would rather not do the DNS part yourself, that is fair enough — it is the one step where a small mistake is invisible until it matters. Set up email on your domain or ask our team to handle the migration, including the records that keep your mail out of the spam folder.