Drive around Poole for ten minutes and you’ll see it: a smart, sign-written van, a good local business, and on the back doors a Gmail or Hotmail address with a name and a birth year in it.
There’s nothing wrong with Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail or Yahoo for personal email. But on a van, a flyer or an invoice, a personal address quietly sends the wrong message about a business that’s often doing excellent work.
What customers see
When someone’s choosing between two tradespeople, they look for clues about who’s established and who’ll still be around if something goes wrong. An address like info@(your business).co.uk looks like a proper business. A personal Hotmail address can look like a side job, even when it isn’t.
It’s the same reason you had the van sign-written instead of using a magnetic sticker. You’ve already invested in looking professional; your email address is the part people have to type.
It’s easier to remember
A customer who saw your van at a neighbour’s house needs to remember how to find you. Your business name followed by .co.uk is easy to remember and easy to search for. A string of names and numbers at gmail.com isn’t, and one wrong digit means their enquiry goes to someone else.
It keeps business and personal separate
When your business email is the same account as your personal one, customer enquiries sit alongside family photos, online shopping and school newsletters. It’s easy to miss a job, and it’s harder to take a proper break when your phone never stops pinging.
With your own domain you can have separate addresses for different jobs:
you@yourbusiness.co.ukfor your own emailquotes@yourbusiness.co.ukorinfo@yourbusiness.co.ukfor new enquiries- a separate address for anyone who helps you with the admin
And if you ever take someone on, they get their own address instead of your password.
You own it
A free email account belongs to the provider. If it’s hacked, locked or closed, getting it back can be slow, and in the meantime customers can’t reach you. Your own domain is yours: you can move it to a different email provider without changing the address printed on your van.
That matters if you ever sell the business, too. The web address and email go with it.
A website doesn’t need to be complicated
Most customers will look you up before they ring. A simple website with what you do, the area you cover and how to get in touch is often all it takes to turn a search into a phone call. It doesn’t need a blog, a shop or a monthly marketing plan.
“But everyone already has my Gmail”
That’s the usual worry, and it’s easy to handle. You keep your old address running while people get used to the new one. We can set it to forward to your new inbox, so nothing gets missed, and you update the van, cards and invoices when you’re ready.
What we offer
We set up side hustles, sole traders and small businesses across Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Somerset with:
- their own web address, such as
yourbusiness.co.uk - professional email to match: up to 10 mailboxes and 100 email addresses on your domain, set up on your phone and computer
- a simple website that looks good on phones and tells people how to reach you
Our starter package is £500, all in. That covers:
- setting everything up
- building your website
- creating your email accounts
- registering your domain name for at least a year
- the first year of web and email hosting
It’s designed for side hustles, sole traders and small businesses with fewer than 10 employees. We explain everything in plain English, and we’ll agree the cost of renewing with you before the first year is up, so there are no surprises.
No lock-in. Your domain, website and email are yours, and you stay in full control of them. If you ever want to move to a different provider, we’ll hand everything over and help you move it.
If you’d like to swap the Gmail on your van for your own name, get in touch and choose “Professional website and email”. We’ll get back to you within a working day.