Your email address says a lot about your business. While many small businesses use free services, like Gmail or Yahoo, doing so can harm your credibility, damage customer trust and limit the control you have over your emails. In this post, we explain why email hosting, using a domain-based email address, protects your brand, improves security and makes your communications more professional.
How free email affects your credibility
While millions of individuals use free email services like Google and Yahoo, the vast majority of businesses have domain-based email addresses, usually with the same domain name as their website. Moreover, consumers expect businesses to have these addresses.
With cybercriminals using free email accounts to impersonate businesses for scams and phishing, consumers can doubt the authenticity of business emails that use these free services. They can also make your business look less professional. Together, this means your emails have a greater chance of being ignored or marked as spam.
Building trust with branded email
Email addresses that include branded domains, such as [email protected] or [email protected], are considered much more trustworthy. This is because only your business can send emails using your registered domain name.
Not only do these emails identify the sender, but by consistently using them on your website, emails and other forms of promotion, you reinforce your brand identity. This helps establish trust, makes it easier for customers to remember your brand and enhances your business’s credibility and professionalism.
Smarter email security
Though free email platforms do come with some built-in protections, they don’t offer the security that business communications need.
With Webhosting UK’s hosted email, for instance, we provide a range of security features that help keep you and your customers safe. These include:
- Spam and malware filtering: Unwanted emails aren’t just annoying; they can also contain phishing scams or malicious links. The UK government’s ‘Cyber security breaches survey 2024’ reported that 85% of UK companies faced a phishing attack in the previous 12 months. Our SpamExperts filtering stops these harmful emails from reaching your inbox, reducing the risk of malware infection or data theft.
- SPF and DKIM authentication: These two protocols help prove that your emails are genuinely from you. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) verifies that the outbound server is authorised to send emails from your domain, while DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) verifies that your emails haven’t been altered in transit. These measures prevent scammers from forging your email address and tricking your customers.
Businesses that send emails to Gmail or Yahoo accounts are required to have at least one of these protocols in place.
For more information, read: How to Implement DMARC for Google and Yahoo Compliance
- TLS encryption: TLS is a protocol that encrypts emails as they cross the internet, keeping customer data, invoices, login details or anything else confidential.
- UK-based hosting and GDPR compliance: Hosting your email in the UK ensures it’s protected by robust data protection laws. For businesses that handle personal data, this makes it much easier to stay GDPR compliant and avoid penalties.
Together, these security measures can give you and your customers the confidence that your emails are legitimate, private and safe to open.
Email certificates for extra protection
To improve protection for your customers, we also provide email SSL certificates. These digital certificates encrypt your messages and verify that the emails have genuinely come from your domain.
Easy setup and management
A key advantage of using Webhosting UK for your professional email is that you can register your domain directly through us. This simplifies the setup of your email hosting and means you can begin creating your business email addresses in no time.
For help with choosing a domain name, read: How Domain Extensions Affect Trust and Brand Perception
Depending on your chosen plan, you can create multiple email addresses for your business, e.g., yourname@, sales@, customerservice@, and manage them all from a single, user-friendly dashboard. You can also control who has access to the email addresses.
Moreover, you can set up forwarding and autoresponding and create shared calendars and to-do lists. Aside from your online email portal, you can also access Webhosting UK emails in popular clients, like Microsoft Outlook, giving you easy access to them on different devices.
With this level of control and versatility, growing businesses or those with multiple departments can communicate more effectively, both internally and with customers.
Email hosting included with web hosting
Another major benefit is that at Webhosting UK, email hosting comes free with our web hosting plans. So, if you host your website with us, there is no additional cost for email hosting. What’s more, you can manage your hosting and email all from the same dashboard, making life even simpler.
Of course, if you don’t want a website but just need a professional email address, you can choose that option.
Thinking of building a website? It’s easier than you think, read: How Do You Launch a Website in 2025?
Boost marketing impact
Email has been shown to consistently deliver one of the highest returns on investment of any marketing channel. According to 2023 industry data, the average UK ROI for email marketing was £42 for every £1 spent, making it essential for customer acquisition and retention and boosting sales.
However, successful email marketing depends on your email address being trustworthy and professional. With Webhosting UK’s email hosting, your messages are authenticated, perceived as genuine and are less likely to be marked as spam. This means more opens, more clicks and more customers.
Conclusion
While free email addresses are cheap and convenient, they can negatively affect your brand’s identity. Domain-based email hosting, on the other hand, means your email addresses are viewed as professional and authentic. In addition, you have greater flexibility and control, and your emails, inbound and outbound, are secured against cybersecurity threats.
If you’re building a website with Webhosting UK, you can take advantage of the professional email hosting that comes included with your web hosting plan. If you just require domain-based email addresses, check out our range of email hosting plans. Whether you need a single address or unlimited addresses, we have a plan to suit you.
