Want to look more professional to your prosepcts and customers? Then stop using an aol, hotmail, or yahoo e-mail address. It looks much more professional to use a company e-mail address such as bob@company.com. All you need in order to do that is your own domain name. When you own a domain, you can create any e-mail address you want at that domain. For example, you can use bob, info, or anything else.
There are basically two ways to set up domain e-mails:
Option 1: The e-mail address can forward to another existing non-domain e-mail address. For example, bob@company.com forwards to your personal e-mail address. That would mean that any e-mail sent to bob@company.com would automatically forward to your personal e-mail address. The benefits of setting up the e-mail this way is that you still get the professionalism of having a domain e-mail, and also that you don’t have to check two separate e-mail accounts, since all e-mails are going to your personal hotmail, yahoo or aol account.
The negative thing about having your domain e-mail forward is that when you reply to e-mails sent to your domain e-mail, the recipient will see your hotmail e-mail address, not your domain e-mail address. For example – Joe sends you an e-mail to bob@company.com. That e-mail forwards to your personal e-mail address. When you reply to Joe, it will show that the e-mail you sent came from your personal e-mail address, not your domain e-mail address.
Option 2: Set up your domain e-mail address as a separate account in Outlook or your e-mail program. This is by far the more professional option, since any e-mails you send out will show your domain e-mail address. The only down-side is that you need to set up this separate account in Outlook, and check it separately from your personal e-mail account.
Weigh both options and then decide which is best for you.