Recently I have noticed several companies where they are using an @verizon.net or other ISP provided email address for their business. This is the absolute worse choice that you can make when choosing an email address to provide to the public for your business.
I have already had several customers who learned of this first hand, when they moved or changed internet service providers and were unable to take their "business" email address with them.
Unless you work for the ISP, using their domain's email address is NEVER a good idea for your business email.
So what should you do in deciding on your business email address to provide to the public, because you ARE going to need an email address. The fastest, easiest, and free way to go about this would be to get a gmail address such as yourbusinessname@gmail.com. This is NOT the most professional looking, and probably should only be done for businesses that do not yet have an online presence, but its portability for when you move locations or internet providers it is better than using your ISPs provided email address.
Using a free email service such as gmail however does not present the most professional of appearances however, and may make more tech savvy customers skeptical of doing business with you, at least via email. The reason is because anyone can easily set up a free @gmail address and use whatever name that was available. Gmail addresses for business uses should only be used in the start-up phase of your business, or if you rarely communicate with your customers via email.
The best choice for email for your business would be to use your own domain such as yourname@yourcompany.com This provides the most professional appearance to the public, and provides the most legitimacy. Hosting your own email server is probably not the best option for the average business, but fear not you can go to google or many other companies to host your email out on the cloud.
