Emaill/Domain

[Becky Watkins]

I hope this is the right section to post in, and I believe this is just a quick, simple question. We are ready to buy a domain to start utilizing Google Apps. We probably won't be going live right away, but I'll start building it soon. I have a background in web design, so I already have hosting.

Right now my husband and I share a generic email that we have been using for craigslist. We figure it'd be better each have our own emails for personal communication and to put on our cards. The domain I'm choosing is our company name and i think works in length for website, but my husband is afraid it's too long for an email. There is no practical way to shorten it (using the whole words is simpler) in a way that's available.

So which of these is more practical and professional?

[email protected] (domain 16letters)
[email protected] (word 5 letters)

We plan on applying different suffixes to the same first word as we grow.

What i like about using the domain is that you already have the website, and vice versa. Easier to remember. The latter is shorter, but then that's less consistency, except it is something we can continue using as we grow, no matter how many different strategies/companies/websites we have. Thoughts?

[J Scott]

Using your company domain looks a lot more professional than using a gmail address. That said, if the company domain name is extremely long, you won't want to use that as your primary address.

I would recommend finding a shorter version of the company name and using that as your primary domain, but still keep the domain that is your full company name and just have it forward to the one you'll be primarily using.

For example:

- Let's say that your company domain is "thisismycompanyname.com"

- You should also register something like "myconame.com"

- Create email addresses for [email protected] and [email protected]

- Use the shorter name as your primary address, but have the longer one forward to the shorter one.

This way, if someone doesn't know the shorter version of your company domain, they can always use the longer version and it will get to you. But, if they do know the shorter version, they can save themselves some time.